Rachel Papo has a solo exhibition titled “Homeschooled” on display at the Center for Photography Woodstock (CPW) from April 18 – June 14, 2015.

For over a decade, the American-born Israeli photographer Rachel Papo has been examining the experience of youth within the framework of various cultural institutions. Papo’s photographic research is comprehensive yet 
specific–from female conscripts in the Israeli Army to ballet students in St. Petersburg, Russia, to crazed fans of boy bands across the United States. Drawn to documenting groups of people who are in stages of their lives that echo her own past experiences, Papo’s most recent explorations bring her photojournalistic approach with an emphasis on portraiture into the world of homeschooled youth in Upstate New York.

While living in Woodstock with her husband and baby daughter, Papo developed her interest in counter-culture education. As criticism of the U.S. education system grew on a national level she decided to explore this controversial topic in depth and challenge her own prejudgments on the issue. In 2011, she began to photograph a small number of families living in the Catskills, who practice homeschooling. Papo focused particularly on the children, in an attempt to capture what she describes as “their spirit, and the meaning of growing up outside the conventional four classroom walls.”

CPW
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
845-679-9957
http://www.cpw.org/current/rachel-papo/

Browse Rachel Papo’s series “Homeschooled”
Browse all of Rachel Papo’s work at ClampArt

Blog post by:
Brian Paul Clamp, Director