This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
On the occasion of a 10-year retrospective of her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2012, photographer Zoe Strauss said that she strives "to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.”
Now she has set her sights on a project about the unprecedented mass school closings in Philadelphia — nearly one in 10 of the city’s District-run schools will be closed. She is calling her project the Philadelphia School Closings Photo Collective.
After the School Reform Commission took action, "it suddenly seemed as if everything was going to close without being properly documented, that a school would be closed and no one was going to have a photographic record of it," said Strauss, the winner of several prestigious fellowships and a Philadelphia public school graduate. "This is unprecedented, and it’s important for the future to have this kind of archive."
Strauss, best known for her Billboard Project and for her exhibition of work under Interstate 95, founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995.
A project like this is especially important, she said, because traditional newspapers are laying off photographers — witness the Chicago Sun Times‘ obliteration of its entire photography staff last week, including at least one Pulitzer Prize winner. Instead, the paper is training its other staffers how to take pictures with iPhones.
Strauss has put out the call for other photographers to each choose one of the 24 schools slated to be shuttered and document its final days.
So far, about 10 photographers have answered her call. But time is short — those schools will close for good in less than three weeks.
Strauss realizes that people in the schools are stressed and that District staff is concerned about their sensibilities. So is she, Strauss said. She understands that school is a "safe place for students and staff and this is a traumatic moment." She wants her photographers to "have a sense of what it means to go into a school at a time like this."
Strauss herself will document Bok Technical High School, in her South Philadelphia neighborhood. She calls it a "great building," one that has seen generations of students learn trades.
"Some of these buildings will become condos, some will be torn down," she said. "This is about the importance of archiving the spaces before they go."
Photographers interested in collaborating on the project can request to join the Philadelphia School Closings Photo Collective Facebook group.