Boy anthropology

I traveled to NY city last week to spend a day photographing at an all-boys' school in Manhattan. When Robin Breckenridge, the president of the design company I was working for, suggested that along with photographing the students themselves I could look for some of their stuff lying around (she sent me a photo of a couple jackets thrown aside as an example), I objected. "I've just spent the weekend trying to get this sort of stuff picked up at my house," I explained.

But Robin was right. I took an early morning train from DC to New York, and when I arrived at the school there was great stuff, often definitely "boy" stuff, all over the place. Even better was working with the kids. The school covered all the way from K to 12, and the students were unfailingly polite, helpful, and fun to work with, whether I was photographing them "in the wild" or in a staged shot. I felt like an anthropologist working in a not-unfamiliar world. Now I just wish I could get sent to photograph a similar school, a girl version. The comparisons would be a blast.