A Teen Photography Workshop:
Our Selfies, Ourselves?

Presented by FotoFest's Literacy Through Photography and Cherryhurst House

In this intimate and supportive workshop, young women ages 13-19 are invited to explore the "selfie" as a photographic form and expressive technique. The workshop will be held at Houston's Cherryhurst House, an innovative contemporary art space dedicated to artistic process and exchange.

Participating students will work with artists and educators Barbara Levine and Rebecca J. Hopp to examine their personal selfies in relation to self-portraits from the contemporary world as well as photographic history. Utilizing reflective writing and visual awareness exercises, participants will take a deeper look at how they are portraying themselves to others.

Participants will then make their own original works of art as they create self-portraits that meaningfully express their identity. Artwork created in this workshop will be exhibited in FotoFinish, FotoFest's annual exhibition of student art, to be held May 14-21, 2016 at Silver Street Studios.

Workshop Leaders:

Barbara Levine
Curator and artist in residence at Cherryhurst House, Barbara Levine, uses found photographs to enact, or comment on, the inherent tension between the familiar, the remembered and the mysterious. She is the founder of Project B, a found photo archive and collaborative curatorial venture and is the author of Finding Frida Kahlo, Around The World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums and Snapshot Chronicles: Inventing the American Photo Album (all Princeton Architectural Press). Since 2014, she has been the curator and an artist-in-residence at Cherryhurst House in Houston, where she organized the exhibitions Strangely Familiar, Out of Place and Camera Era (its catalogue was named a 2014 Best Photobook by photo-eye). Ms. Levine regularly presents a wide range of constructed photographic collages, objects and images from her archive in museums, galleries and libraries, and is a contributor of photographs for set designs on television series such as Transparent and How I Met Your Mother. Her collection of early vernacular photograph albums is in the permanent collection at the International Center of Photography in New York. Trained as a photographer at the San Francisco Art Institute and receiving a graduate degree in Museology, Ms. Levine served as deputy director of The Contemporary Jewish Museum, and as exhibitions director at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her website is www.projectb.com.

Rebecca J. Hopp
A Minnesota native with over 10 years of experience as an arts educator, Rebecca J. Hopp joined the FotoFest International staff in 2015 as the Literacy Through Photography Program Coordinator. Prior to this appointment, Ms. Hopp had served the LTP program as a teaching artist since 2012. Ms. Hopp is a nationally exhibiting fine art photographer with an undergraduate degree in Advertising Photography from University of Memphis and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Texas Tech University. Ms. Hopp's commitment to arts education spans her career: while completing her graduate work, she served as a TEACH (Teaching Effectiveness and Career Advancement) Fellow at Texas Tech University and engaged in a community-enrichment project through the Ogallala Commons using photography to increase community awareness. In 2014, Ms. Hopp was named a Houston Holocaust Museum Warren Fellow for Future Teachers. Rebecca is a passionate supporter of arts-based education and integration and has witnessed first-hand the power of the arts to engage students in understanding themselves and the world around them.