If the ultimate goal of any artist is to be recognized for their work, Sarah Molinari and Molly Harman have a giant head start on their artistic peers.
The two Yorktown High School photography students are displaying their portfolios in a local bookstore as part of their advanced-level art class.
Molinari and Harman, both seniors at the Arlington school, are in Photo 4, the highest-level photography class the Arlington public school system has to offer.
Taught at Yorktown by instructor Allen Beland, the singular focus of the entire class is for the students to organize a multi-week photo show of their own work in a business or public space.
Beland said that the students are responsible for all aspects of arranging the show, from securing the space to making prints of their best work and even to publicizing the event.
"It would be easy for me to make the calls," Beland said. "But to me, that didn’t give the students any experience."
At the end of the year, the students’ only grade in the class is based on whether they were able to execute their photo show and how well they were able to execute it.
The Photo 4 class at Yorktown began three years ago when a photography student who had completed all of the school’s photo classes wanted to continue in the program.
Beland worked with the public school system — "I pulled some strings," he said — and was able to create the Photo 4 class by focusing on displaying the photos publicly.
"[I thought], ‘Why not do a photo show?’" Beland said. "Most photo students don’t even have a show in college."
After the first year was a success the program expanded. While Yorktown is still the only high school in Arlington that offers the class, this year there were 17 Photo 4 students, all of whom had to secure a place to display their work.
MOLINARI AND HARMAN were able to display their photos in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Falls Church. At their show’s opening last week, family, friends and passing shoppers stopped by to congratulate the pair and view the fruits of their photographic labor.
"In 8th grade, [I took] a class with a dark room," Molinari, who will be attending The College of William & Mary next year, said. "I’ve continued with it every year."
She said that while she’s not very artistic in a traditional sense of drawing or painting, she likes to express herself with her camera.
"It’s a very relaxing process to see an image come out on film," Molinari said.
Harman agreed and said that, while she couldn’t paint, she felt that photography was her own form of artistic expression.
Her photos mainly focus on patterns found in everyday life, although Harman admits that she can sometimes stray from this topic.
"My photos can be all over the place," she said.
Like Molinari, she also took photo classes prior to entering high school and kept up with it every year since. Harman will be attending Elon University in North Carolina next year.
Neither of the students said that they were considering photography as a career, although Harman said that she would like to pursue photography at Elon, but this didn’t seem to disturb Beland.
He said that the process of putting on a photo show teaches valuable life skills that can be used in any field.
"I wanted [the students] to learn to hear no on the phone and learn how to be tenacious," Beland said.
He also recalled the story of one of his former students who was applying to College of Wooster near Cleveland. Like Molinari and Harman, the student had no interest in a career in photography but had completed Photo 4 and had culled a portfolio of her best work.
Beland said that a Wooster admissions officer was initially skeptical about admitting the student. But when the student showed her portfolio to the officer, he was so impressed that he not only admitted her but gave her a scholarship to attend the school worth $15,000 a year.