School Days

In 2018, fine art photographer Melissa Ann Pinney began a one-year artist residency in a Chicago public school. That residency became an ongoing project when Pinney was invited to photograph at three additional and distinctly different public schools in Chicago. 

Chicago Public School students are growing up as heirs to the Black Lives Matter movement, #MeToo and an insistence on gender fluidity. When Pinney began this work in 2018, she had no idea of what was to come—how the project would evolve and shift through an ongoing global pandemic, a renewed focus on systemic racial and gender inequities and rampant gun violence. These images celebrate an astonishing range of emerging identities amid friendships and school rituals.

Early on, Pinney taped up 200 photos in the school’s hallways to show the work she’d done. “Groups of students on their way to lunch blocked the hallway in their eagerness to see the pictures and their excitement to find themselves and their friends in the display. It was thrilling to witness their enthusiastic response to my work, ” she said. Since then Pinney has mounted exhibitions in each of the schools. Now students ask her to photograph their sports events and performances, to document their birthdays and parties

Those five years documenting the schools weren’t without sadness and tragedy. Six of the students Pinney photographed were shot and killed during her tenure as artist-in-residence. Her upcoming book, In Their Own Light, is dedicated to those students and their families.

Last June, the students Pinney first met as ninth graders graduated. Pinney photographed one student, named Khov’ya, throughout her high school years. Before graduation, Pinney gave her prints of all the pictures they made together; Khov’ya took the prints home where family members claimed their favorite images to keep. 

For Pinney, one of the most unexpected rewards was discovering how much the students value the photographs. As Khov’ya said “I’m really happy you took those pictures. They might have seemed like regular days, but it’s good to look back on those moments … little memories and little moments. We just knew that you were always here, taking pictures.”