Of the one-tenth of 1 percent of the total population that thinks of giving books of black-and-white photography as Christmas gifts, nine-tenths of them will give books by Ansel Adams. The remainder will divide themselves fairly evenly among, probably, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, and oh, does Diane Keaton have a book out this year? The percentage that will buy Howard Seth Miller’s School is too small to be measured, even with sophisticated instruments.
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Miller, a local photographer, published School himself with the help of grant money. The design, manufacture, and distribution of the book are up to him. A lot of people attempt this sort of thing, at great personal expense and with even greater expectations, and a lot of their books aren’t very good. But if a book is good, people will buy it, right? What do you think? Though Miller hasn’t labored in total obscurity (Chicago magazine ran a selection of the photos in October 1989), the quietness with which School hit the water strikes him as, well, unfair somehow.
What it is is a collection of 42 highly evocative black-and-white photographs that Miller took in elementary schools here in Chicago, where he’s been living for the past seven years, and in New York, where he’s from. He has an eye for childhood. Many of the photos are about such things as a child’s first considering the idea of, say, “air.” Or “yesterday.” Words on chalkboards, broken up by blasts of sunlight, form mysterious poems about the universe. Even in the photos where children are not actually present, their science projects and paraphernalia make you aware of them, and you’re reminded of your own grade-school classrooms, and how they were both safe and scary. The photos are interspersed with essays composed by Miller and written–appropriately–on lined paper.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Charles Eshelman.
