You know how it is. You go to school someplace, it becomes your world, you fall in love, and then you drift apart. Classic story.
Imagine my delight, then, when my college asked me to return to campus and photograph it as a tour to attract new students. Though I hadn’t spent any serious time there for decades, my affection for the humble, mountain-top campus in southern Vermont remained strong. Many of my best and oldest friendships started there, including the one I have with my wife.
During the spring and early summer of 2020, I visited campus regularly. It’s only an hour and a half from my home, but like the rest of Vermont, the school was isolated. You had to make an effort to get there, and once you arrived, there wasn’t much else to do but enjoy the place. I ate lunch in the dining hall with the students and photographed them in class. Slowly, I began to feel like I fit in again, and I was excited by the images I was capturing.
Marlboro offered a unique education. Class-size was ridiculously small (about 50 students), and after we’d passed a clear writing requirement, we were encouraged to create our own curriculum of study, merging as many disciplines as needed. Many classes were taught by tutorial, one-on-one. By and large, we were a student body made up of misfits with a passion for scholarship and tolerance of snow.
But as the months crept toward graduation that year, clouds began to form over the college and the rest of the world. Gradually, it became clear that the school’s very existence was in doubt. (COVID certainly complicated an already difficult situation, but it was not the cause.) Eventually, it was announced that the graduating class that year would be the last.
Out of the turmoil this realization caused everyone (students, staff, alumni, neighbors, friends), my mission changed. Instead of marketing for an outside audience, I was documenting the school for the generations that loved it so deeply. Instead of just capturing what might appeal to a prospective student, I felt I needed to capture everything. Thankfully, the school administration agreed. We decided together that the tour would become a book. Everyone at the school—students, staff, faculty—would receive a copy at that final graduation.
In a postscript, the college merged with Emerson College in Boston. Faculty and students left the mountain in Vermont for a set of skyscrapers on the Common. I’m told that this summer (2025) the last Marlboro student graduated, and Emerson continues to embrace many of my school’s traditions and principles. The college campus was bought by the Marlboro Music Festival, which once only managed the grounds durning the summer.
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