Mark
Wittig

Structures that Transformed Education – 1724 to 1974

With my project, Structures that Transformed Education – 1724 to 1974, I am creating a photographic typological study of school properties that are associated with critical events, court cases, and educational programs that are connected with proceedings that both led to and followed the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs Board of Education that in 1954 overturned the doctrine of "Separate but Equal" in public education. In the effort to create a photographic study of school-buildings, I use a 4x5 large-format view camera, black & white film, and a traditional wet darkroom, a fully immersive process that results in a tangible photographic object. The purpose of creating this study of school properties is to highlight historic structures that best exemplify the historical movement to provide for a nondiscriminatory education for all.

I am traveling throughout the United States to photograph school properties that have been identified as significant places, and I am actively searching out properties that have been overlooked in the larger national narrative in the history of educational reform. Many of the schools are concentrated in the southern part of the United States. However, events and court decisions that determined that education segregation was unconstitutional did occur in different regions of the country. The Supreme Court case known as Brown vs Board of Education was not a single case, but rather a coordinated group of five lawsuits against school districts in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. To research school properties, events, and court decisions associated with school desegregation, I have been collaborating with artists and historic preservationists, searching through historic documents, reading about the history of education, and referring to a study about desegregation in public education by the U.S. Department of the Interior.