In 2019, the year before the pandemic swept across the country, I was hired by my alma mater to photograph a panoramic tour of the campus. I was working for the Marlboro College admissions office. My tour was to be for promotional purposes; they wanted to attract more students.
It had been 30 years since I’d been a student there, and I delighted in returning to my old stomping grounds. There were changes, of course, but the cloistered, scholarly existence of 200 students on a mountain in Vermont still felt the same. As my project progressed, though, its purpose changed.
Even without COVID beginning to take hold of the country, the school was clearly not well. It quickly went from bad to worse, and instead of celebrating a thriving institution, I found I was working on documenting its last days. This book was produced in cooperation with the school’s last administration, and copies were distributed to the school’s students and staff at the last graduation. It was a sad honor to wok on. Below is the official blurb:
In 1946, Walter and Flora Hendricks wanted to offer college students a different kind of education. As an alternative to the lecture halls and the impersonal education found at most American universities, they imagined a haven for independent scholars where students had a voice in how the college was run. The Hendricks bought the farm adjacent to their own on a hilltop in southern Vermont and began teaching classes in a converted barn. For 74 years, in one-on-one tutorials and classes with no more than a dozen students, self-directed scholarship was honored and cultivated.
In 2020, Marlboro College closed its doors forever. An alliance with Emerson College in Boston will offer a new home for most students and faculty, but that year’s graduating class was the last from the campus at the end of South Road in Marlboro, Vermont.
With dozens of panoramic photographs taken at the college from 2019–2020 and many more images from the school’s archives, this book acts as a record of Marlboro College’s final year, a guide to key campus locations, and a scrapbook from its seven decades as a unique, beloved, and inspiring school.
Available from Levellers Press.
150 pages— in full color (mostly)
9″x9″x1″, 2 lbs
$35.00
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