First Exposures

This is Robert. He was a kid that I worked with in First Exposures. FX is a mentoring program that pairs "at risk" youth with mentors to learn how to express themselves through photography. I worked with FX in 2004 as a mentor for one school year. FX is sponsored by Camerwork, a photo gallery in San Francisco. Every Saturday we'd get together as a group and shoot pictures, print in the darkroom, walk around the dogpark and get to know each other. I remember the director once saying "just by being here, every Saturday, you're making a difference." That made me feel good. This year, the director created a book project and the kids published a book of their work. Some of the kids that I worked with were featured in the book. On Thursday, they had a big gallery show at Camerawork. Their photographs were professionally matted and framed and hung on the white gallery walls. There were pictures of kids skating, kids throwing up gang signs, kids laughing. There were portraits, self portraits and urban street scenes. There were pictures from the series that our class produced into billboards in 2004 that served as public service announcements geared toward tolerance. Standing there in the gallery, looking at these pictures, I beamed. I beamed so brightly, so proudly I thought my heart would burst. I hugged a few kids, shocked that they remembered me (after all, 2 years is like sooooo long ago!). I chatted with Eric, the current director about what they were working on this year. He told me that they were going to explore the term "at risk" as they had been lableled by the program. How did they see themselves as at risk? When I worked with them, I often wondered what school counselor or social worker had steered them into the program, and why, but I never asked. I didn't want it to affect my relationship to them. I only wanted to see what they wanted to show me of themselves. Obviously some kids had it harder than others. As I was chatting with Eric, a student came up to talk with us. He was 16. Super bright- smart, well spoken, sweet, sincere. He was proud of what they had accomplished this year and he clearly held Eric in high esteem. After he left us, Eric told me that that young man had one of the saddest stories as far as his background was concerned. Whatever his story was, First Exposures had helped him through a hard time and he was clearly grateful to have been involved. It was this young man's words that I read on the wall as I entered the gallery- "My camera is my third eye, First Exposures is my second home and photography is my first love".