Art League Gallery Exhibits SOHO Photos

The Art League is featuring a special exhibit of photographs taken by this year’s SOHO, or a Space of Her Own, class.

The exhibit opens Saturday and runs through Feb. 3 in The Art League Gallery.

The "SOHO Photography Project" features two works by each of the participants in the SOHO mentorship program for at-risk Alexandria girls.

For the project, each of the 12 girls in the 2012–2013 SOHO class used a camera and a roll of black-and-white film to take and develop their own photos. After a lesson from Art League photography instructor Alison Duvall, the girls and their mentors let their imaginations go, putting together costumes, snapping photographs, and creating stories and personas to go along with the photos.

They took their cameras home to finish up the film with photos of friends and family members. A few weeks later, the girls returned to The Art League School’s darkroom to develop two photographs each, which for many of the girls was a first trip to a darkroom. After developing the film, the girls wrote artist statements, introducing themselves to the viewer and explaining the images they chose for the exhibit.

A Space of Her Own is an award-winning outreach program engaging at-risk, low-income, 5th-grade girls in a year of personal growth centered on art.

This special collaboration between The Art League and the City of Alexandria's Court Service Unit pairs each girl with an adult, female mentor to participate in art lessons led by Art League artist instructors. Each week, girls and mentors work together to create expressive artwork. These sessions become the catalyst to discuss larger life concerns, decision-making, and emotional issues. At the completion of the program, the teams remodel each of the girls' bedrooms, incorporating all of their artwork, to truly give each girl a "space of her own."