Sarah Stolfa — the raven-haired, elaborately inked doyenne of the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center — rules an airy former warehouse in the Crane Arts Building of Kensington that is home to a special art organization.
Stolfa dreamed up the PPAC six years ago, soon after finishing an education in photography and fine art. She imagined an all-in-one digital photo lab, gallery space and educational organization — a place for artists to display their work and for novices to learn about photography and access technology to improve their craft.
Nothing like it existed outside of university programs.
One of the first people she went to for advice about her idea was Stuart Rome, an influential photography professor with deep roots in Drexel’s Photography program.
“You know what this is going to do to you as an artist, right?” he asked, remembering firsthand the toll it took on him to help design the Photography program at Drexel in the ’80s.
“I know, but I’m OK with that,” she told him. “I don’t think it’ll be like that forever.”
Stolfa, who already had a 2005 degree in photography from Drexel, had just graduated from Yale with an MFA in photography in 2008. In 2009, she published a book of portraits that she’d started while at Drexel — and which won her the New York Times Magazine College Photography Contest — called “The Regulars.” Based on portraits of bar patrons she served as a bartender at Philadelphia’s McGlinchey’s Tavern, the photo series combines the lighting, depth and detail of 17th-century Dutch paintings with contemporary commentary on social isolation. An artistic career awaited her, but Stolfa had a lot of ideas she wanted to see through first.
In her heart, she worried that investing her energy in running an organization would stifle her creative work. On top of that, she had plans to start a family. But Rome was moved by her desire to give back to Philadelphia and agreed to help get the project off the ground. Stolfa reasoned that she was laying the foundation for an organization that could someday live on without her.
Now passing its five-year milestone, the PPAC has become a fixture in Philadelphia’s photographic community, host to an annual photo day popular with the public and regular classes and photographic exhibitions. The space has doubled and the full-time staff has grown from two to five. It has attracted a robust 16-person board of trustees made up of successful businesspeople, doctors and photographers. The budget this year approaches $1 million, up almost tenfold from year one.
“The challenge when we opened was getting support and getting people in the door on little resources,” recalls Stolfa.
Today, the problem isn’t getting people in the door, it’s finding room for them all. The Free After School Teen Program, of which Stolfa is particularly proud, has too many applicants. Stolfa faces adding a second section to fit demand, but she is unsure exactly how.
“We need an extra $10,000 because we need an instructor and teaching assistant and a couple more books or we have to turn kids away,” she says. “And that’s not success to me. We’re not turning kids away.”
Her commitment hasn’t always been easy on her. During the first year, she was teaching a class and pregnant with her first child when she thought she felt contractions. Her doctor’s office told her to come in immediately.
“I hung up, and then was like, ‘I’m gonna finish teaching this class,’” she says, determined not to let her students down.
When she finally arrived at the hospital, she was in preterm labor and ended up hospitalized for five days (the doctors were able to interrupt the labor and she went on to deliver at full term).
She has since pulled back from most teaching, but one class is special. It’s a project-based group that has been meeting for two and a half years. One of her students, a freelance writer named Debbie Lerman, has pushed herself especially hard to make better work. It’s paid off, earning Lerman a Fleisher Art Memorial Wind Challenge and a solo show in 2017.
“When she came in here, she was making simple, cliché pictures,” says Stolfa. “She’s very open to experimenting and pushed her way through stuff.”
Lerman says Stolfa is different from other instructors she’s had in classes at Fleisher Art Memorial and University of the Arts. From Stolfa, she gets honest feedback.
“That was so refreshing because in the classes I’d taken before, everyone wanted to be real positive,” says Lerman, “which is great for confidence but not great for making progress.”
This fall, PPAC will host its 6th annual Philly Photo Day — an outreach program collecting thousands of photos from mainly amateur photographers throughout the Greater Philadelphia region. Although growing in popularity, Philly Photo Day will take a hiatus next year because Stolfa fears it’s becoming the only thing PPAC is known for. What PPAC provides for the community is always changing, she says. She believes art education and photography are evolving disciplines and it’s her mission to adapt with the needs of local artists.
“If we’re still doing well and relevant — that’s my goal,” says Stolfa. “What that means in 10 years, your guess is as good as mine.”
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