The Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) has started its annual workshops and lecture season, and has its latest pair of exhibits opening with an Artists’ Reception this Saturday evening, June 11. “Camp: Visiting Day,” curated by CPW executive director Ariel Shanberg, plays on the region’s – and season’s – long history as a home-away-from-home for kids and teenagers. Working with some of the nation’s top artists, the results range from the heartbreakingly nostalgic to the observationally astute and occasionally caustic.

The results highlight the many ways in which our worlds are captured and heightened in snapshot realities. While one photographer follows up, 20 years after, on her daughters’ friends in a series of telling diptychs, another explores his discovery that the Boy Scout camp that he attended when a boy is now a getaway for adult gay men. We see weight-loss camps in Catskill and empowerment experiments with a counterculture tilt in the woods of Western Massachusetts. A video explores the feelings of alienation and fear that some of us still remember from those first trips away, while another body of work finds the resonance in camp architecture and furnishings.

Augmenting this main gallery show will be the equally haunting and inspirational “Becoming Muses,” featuring works by a selection of past and present CPW workshop instructors and students, which focuses on repeat images of three Woodstock families that served as models for a number of photo sessions over the years. The results capture elements of what it is to grow up in arts-appreciating communities, the ways in which different photographers see and the often-underappreciated manner in which artists and their subjects interact and affect each other. In other words, it’s the very stuff of inspiration and how it can grow over time, confusing all boundaries between Muse and the inspired.

This one captures, as grandly as “Camp” recalls past summer impressions, how CPW has subtly shifted the community that it has inhabited throughout its 34 years of life. It continues to do so, via both its workshops (many sold out, but check online for schedule and availability) as well as its always-crowded Saturday-night photo lectures. The latter resume next Saturday, June 18, with Elinor Carucci discussing and demonstrating her work in personal narrative. This, through hard work and a consistent eye for creating the best atmosphere possible for creation art, as well as art appreciation, has made the Center for Photography at Woodstock the regional and national treasure that it is recognized as today.

The upcoming “Camp: Visiting Day” and “Becoming Muses” shows open this Saturday, June 11 with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. at the CPW galleries, located at 59 Tinker Street in Woodstock, then stay open through August. For further information, including full workshop and lecture series schedules for the coming months, call (845) 679-9957 or visit www.cpw.org.