Judith Leitner
is an innovative, versatile art educator. She has many years of experience designing, teaching, and curating photography and visual arts programs for creative thinkers of all ages and fields of endeavor. She is a passionate advocate for the artist mindset and eloquent visual storytelling. 

Judith is a past co-founder and Director of Arts at The Toronto Heschel School (1996-2021) and creator and owner of My Voice My Lens: The Art And Power Of Self-Portrait Photography (2013 – present).  As always, Judith’s constant teacher is her camera’s lens.

”I released the shutter, my heart thumping. If I had captured what I wanted, it would be a picture based on related shapes and deepest human feeling. A step in my own evolution.”

A PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE can illuminate the familiar and unfamiliar, evoke memory, unveil secrets, and propose bold, fresh ways of contemplating the flow of time, beauty and identity. Each is a reflection of its creator’s way of thinking and seeing, through the camera’s lens. A SELF-PORTRAIT IS CREATED when the photographer’s eye and lens turn inwards. It is a record of one’s self seen, experienced and revealed. It is, in the deepest sense, an expression of what one feels about one’s life in all of its complexity. MY VOICE, MY LENS is a series of workshops designed to integrate the arts of leadership with self-portrait photography. The photography component explores four fundamental themes that guide artists in ‘seeing oneself’ through a camera’s lens, as well as towards an understanding of these themes’ visual impact on photographic imagery. We look at ‘Light and Shadow’, ‘Point of View and Angle of View’, ‘The Frame and Picture within a Picture’, and ‘Self-Portrait as Metaphor’.

At the beginning of each workshop, the artists present their ‘Best Of’ self-portraits - as part a weekly assignment related to these photographic themes. They then engage in a collective conversation in response to each shared image. The artists also compose a weekly artist’s statement that describes his or her creative process and intention. MY VOICE, MY LENS REPRESENTS THE ARTFUL EVOLUTION of 85 Wave leaders - through self-portrait photographs created in 10 cohorts over the past 5 years (2016 - present). Each artist continues to inspire me to look deep within and to be an eloquent communicator of visual stories that truly matter.