Lindsey White
In May of last year, I went on campus to retrieve some belongings. When I opened the door to my classroom, it smelled comforting, like home. I walked up to the Photo Office, where Hank Wessel used to hide out. All alone, I stared at my weird piles of books, folders, napkins, costumes, and party supplies. The calendar still says it’s March. I don’t want to move anything. I don’t want to say goodbye to students by pressing the “end meeting” button.
Locker doors half open, a soda lodged in a cubby, prints hanging out of the dryer.
I walk up the cement risers by the library. I never go over there because that’s where all the students smoke pot. It’s best not to see that before they walk into your classroom. But I walk all the way to the top of the steps, look out across the skyline, and then back at the school. Sun blares on the sharp, cement corners. The tower stands tall surveying the empty scene.
What? Is? Art? is a collection of photographs made on the campus of the San Francisco Art Institute, where Lindsey White is an Assistant Professor and Photography Department Chair.
Photography by John Wilson White. Special thanks to Tap Plastics.