Photographs of classrooms are a pretty stable genre of institutional photography. Generally they’re meant to make people feel warm and fuzzy about classrooms, students and professors. As they should! That’s not even a distortion of the reality at a small teaching-centered college like my own: we mostly do feel good about our classrooms, all of us. Maybe better on a nice spring day when everyone can sit outside.
Some years ago, I was trying to document “a year in the life of a college professor” by taking pictures throughout the year. I was, as per usual, a bit too easily distracted to really stick the landing on the project (and it bled over one academic year into the next), but I did take shots in a number of classes with the permission of the students. I think it’s easier for students to forget a photographer is there if it’s the professor, oddly enough. So I did get a number of charming pictures that felt more spontaneous and a bit more real-life.
To wit:
Anyway, I wouldn’t mind doing another round of these at some point, but I think contemporary students might be warier about giving me the ok to do it. There was a period where social media seemed to be pushing everyone to share photos of everything all the time, but Generation Z is (I think as a result) considerably more cautious about photography in settings that are not fully public or under their control.