First Exposures: Youth Opportunities

Through Photography

 

 

Group of aspiring photographers working with mentors to produce real zines with an authentic do-it-yourself feel. Each piece reflects a personal interest or theme: the experiences of an autistic brother, dogs, cityscapes, school, traveling. Photographers work on their pieces over several months, mastering the use of the cameras as well as stylistic compositional elements such as balance, contrast, foreground and background.

 

Artworks in themselves, the zines incorporate commentary and captions in the style of the photographs and their subjects. Adobe Books in SF’s Mission District, a musty old eclectic used-book store where people still make time to sit in armchairs and discuss Immanuel Kant and Goethe and modern politics and enjoy free pastries left as offerings to wooden figurines of Hindu and Buddhist deities, showcases the work of the First Exposures students.

 

From First Exposures:

 

First Exposures: Youth Opportunities Through Photography is a special interest mentoring program where academic skills and life skills are developed by combining the benefits of mentoring relationships with art education. The volunteer mentors are professional, commercial and fine art photographers with a commitment to youth and to education. Their students are creative young people, aged 11-18, with backgrounds that include homelessness, foster care or low-income living situations. The students and mentors work together in one-to-one partnerships in a group setting. First Exposures fosters supportive intergenerational relationships in a stimulating environment of active learning.

 

First Exposures is a demanding program. Both the students and their mentors agree to attend each Saturday class from 10:00 to 2:30 PM for at least one academic semester. Most students and mentors stay in the program for one year. Students develop photographic skills and get exposed to a larger world than they may otherwise know. We meet at either SF Camerawork (a nonprofit photography gallery) or RayKo Photo Center (an excellent community darkroom). We reinforce our class time spent in experiential learning environments: field trips to local newspapers, major museums, alternative art spaces, commercial photography studios, and local colleges or universities. Once each semester we go on a “Photo Safari” field trip to locations like San Francisco Zoo, Fort Point, the Hyde Street Pier, the Marin Headlands, or SF Botanical Gardens. The students use their cameras to explore and interpret these places along with sites and people closer to home.

 

First Exposures was initiated at Eye Gallery in 1993 and was redeveloped under SF Camerawork’s sponsorship in 1996. SF Camerawork is the base of a support network for the partnership between the student and his or her mentor. This network includes the support of the youth service providers who work collaboratively with SF Camerawork and First Exposures, Bay Area mentoring organizations, professional child care workers, and the student’s families or guardians.

 

For additional information, contact Erik Auerbach at 

(415) 512.2020 x107

 

 

 

Here is what some mentors and FX students have had to say about their time at the program.

 

Students:

 

“Working with a mentor gives me more knowledge than I get working alone. It allows me to get information and try new things and get help with things I may need to get help with. I can get “feed-back” about pictures I have taken and get to talk to someone about more than photography sometimes.”

            –First semester student age 13

 

“Photography is fun and useful. Sometimes I get questions like “What is the right f/stop?” and I can easily answer them. Also you get special advantages when people ask you to take pictures for them, then you can really show your stuff!”   

 –Fourth semester student age 15

 

“Photographs help keep the memory.”     -First semester student, age 14

 

“My mentor teaches me how to print and how to see things differently.”

            -First semester student, age 14

 

“My mentor taught me how to develop pictures and use an enlarger. He works hard with me to finish the pictures that I like. I hope I will be able to work with him again next semester.”    

– First semester student, age 16

 

Mentors:

 

“Being a mentor has given me the opportunity to share my love of photography with the creative and motivated kids in First Exposures. We have learned a lot about each other and the medium.”   

             -First semester mentor, age 26

 

“I have put a lot of things in perspective both in my life and other people’s lives by spending time with kids from various backgrounds.”  

             -Fourth semester mentor, age 34

 

“We are constantly teaching each other new things. There is not one day that has gone by in the program where I have not learned something new from a student. Sometimes I get to be the student and the teacher at the same time.”   

– Mentor, age 28

 

 

What you can expect along the way:

 

Submit completed application

Application reviewed by staff

Personal interview with program coordinator

References checked

Background check from live scan fingerprinting with DOJ and FBI

Must provide DMV driving record and copy of insurance if applicable

Mandatory mentor training

MANDATORY MENTOR MEETINGS MONTHLY