In 2010, to escape the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn, photographer Rachel Papo (MFA 2005 Photography, Video and Related Media) moved with her husband and infant daughter to Woodstock, New York. One afternoon at a neighborhood café, Papo started a conversation with a bright and charismatic five-year-old girl named True. It turned out that True was being homeschooled, a practice Papo knew little about. Homeschooled children do not learn in a formal setting, but instead are taught outside the classroom by a parent or tutor. Intrigued, Papo spoke with True’s mother and, with her permission, visited the girl’s home to take photographs capturing her nontraditional educational experience.

Spending the day in True’s world and seeing up close her vitality, enthusiasm and imagination piqued Papo’s curiosity—as did the idea of homeschooling, since the photographer herself had an academic-minded upbringing. “Half of my family are teachers and we all went to school and university,” Papo says. “So at first I didn’t see how this could be a positive thing for a child.” However, based on her time with True, she decided to seek out other members of Woodstock’s homeschooling community, and began what became a two-year project of documenting their lives, with a special focus on True, photographing her in every season and attempting to capture every activity that she did. The result of that work can now be seen in Homeschooled (Kehrer Verlag), Papo’s second book, published this September.

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