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Jeff Zenick
Class Act
September 28, 2008
The New York Times
By JEFF ZENICK
About five years ago, an American friend teaching English in
Japan sent me yearbook pictures of his students.
Almost immediately, I started
working on multi-portrait drawings from those photographs.
I went on to make a
series of drawings based on a 1964 yearbook from the Bronx,
then I turned to my
wife’s 1972 yearbook from her high school in Cheyenne, Wyo.
When I make these
drawings, I can’t help but think about the people I’m depicting.
I make up
stories in my head about them, wondering what they were like (or are like),
calculating how old they’d be now and the chances that they’re still alive.
Before long, I started acquiring yearbooks.
I found that the older ones,
especially, have wonderful quotations to go with the pictures.
The drawings
below come from two yearbooks in my collection; the names and quotations are
verbatim.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/28/opinion/20090605_opart.html
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