Vocapedia > Media > USA > NYT > Illustrations > 2008-2009

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