Book Documents 8 Years of Photography by Foster Youth
Publication is bittersweet, as program that produced images comes to a close
Tee Tagor, a transgender photographer who grew up and lived on three continents and an island in the Caribbean, has lived a full life for someone who puts his age “around 30.” He ran away from his foster family as a teenager and eventually landed in a Tenderloin residential hotel. In between, he worked and studied in Georgia, New Mexico and Southern California, and sometimes lived in shelters. An emerging artist, he is considering selling pieces online for a sex-change operation.
Tagor – who is still biologically female but identifies as male – is one of a 25 photographers featured in the new book “Fostering Art: 2003-2011.” The Anthology comprises eight years of words and photographs by current and former foster youth in the Bay Area.
The book takes its title from a photography program that operates under the umbrella of A Home Within, a San Francisco nonprofit connecting foster youth with long-term therapy. Each year, about two dozen students attend the program’s weekly classes, learning to express themselves through essays and images, and documenting their lives along the way.
“Art and photography are necessary to keep me alive,” Tagor said. “It’s a basic need for me. That’s where I get validation because my voice is heard but I also get to produce something from my heart.”
On Thursday night, Fostering Art held an exhibition at the SF Cameraworks gallery in downtown San Francisco. The work ranged from urban landscapes to provocative self-portraits, documenting the desperation, self-discovery and transcendence of fraught but extraordinary lives.
The event was bittersweet. While the photographers were celebrating the launch of the book, they were also saying goodbye to the program as they’ve known it. As of next year, Fostering Art will no longer provide direct services to young people. The foundation grants that fund the program have largely dried up thanks to the dismal economy and the group wants to shift its remaining resources toward teaching other nonprofits how to replicate the program nationally.
“A lot of the students, they’re so used to things ending in their lives that it’s really hard that this program is ending,” said Amanda Herman, Fostering Art’s program director. “I agree with the overall goal, and the mission of having it accessible nationally is really exciting, but I think for the group that we work with, it’s kind of devastating for them. It’s a big loss.”
Fostering Art was started in 2003 by photographer Jessica Ingram and is predicated on the idea that foster kids cannot heal without healthy, consistent, relationships. Tagor, who said he suffered physical and emotional abuse in the foster care system, said he’s still learning how to build those relationships and improve his social skills.
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