Nixon, Nicholas. School. Robert Coles (text) and Nicholas Nixon (photos).

Little, Brown, 1998. [Includes students at the Boston Latin School, Perkins School for the Blind, and a school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.] In  this book, Robert Coles, a child psychologist, and photographer Nicholas Nixon joined forces to present portraits of American schoolchildren in three Boston-area settings.  First edition, new, fine hardcover with dust jacket. Still in original shrinkwrap. Summary:

School (published in 1998 by Bulfinch Press / Little, Brown and Company) is a powerful collaborative monograph combining the documentary talents of acclaimed American photographer Nicholas Nixon and Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles. The 176-page book contains 90 duotone photographic plates and a three-part essay, offering an intimate, comparative look into the inner worlds, diverse challenges, and daily routines of students across three distinct educational environments in the Boston area.

Core Content & Conceptual Framework

1. Three Diverse Microcosms of Education

The structural backbone of the book is its systematic exploration of three highly contrasting institutional settings. By embedding themselves within these specific communities, Coles and Nixon analyze how vastly different student populations navigate the social and physical spaces of learning:

• The Cambridge Elementary School: A public neighborhood school focusing on foundational child development, diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and the early socialization of young children.

• The Boston Latin School: A prestigious, highly competitive, and historically elite public exam school emphasizing rigorous academics, intellectual drive, and the anxieties of teenage achievement.

• The Perkins School for the Blind: A specialized world-renowned institution dedicated to serving profoundly visually impaired and multi-disabled children, focusing on physical adaptation, tactile learning, and emotional resilience.

2. Large-Format Intimacy and Humanist Portraits

Nixon utilizes his signature large-format 8x10 view camera to capture student portraits that subvert traditional, generic school-picture photography. The images bypass standard classroom clichés to document raw emotional states—closeness, boredom, intense focus, isolation, and joy. Nixon's tight framing and shallow depth of field force a direct confrontation with the individuality of each child, highlighting the universal physical traits of youth while respecting the unique vulnerabilities of the students.

3. Psychological Prose and Verbal Self-Expression

The volume transcends the standard format of an art photography book by pairing the visual plates with direct quotations from the children alongside a sprawling text by Dr. Robert Coles. Coles, a graduate of Boston Latin himself, blends personal memoir with his deep professional expertise in child psychology. His commentary decodes the behavioral dynamics captured in Nixon’s photos, examining how children internalize the expectations of their teachers, the pressures of their peers, and the limitations or gifts of their own bodies.

Released during a period of intense national debate over public education reform and structural inequity, School stands as a definitive milestone in the tradition of humanist documentary literature. By wedding rigorous psychiatric observation with unblinking, large-format visual portraiture, Coles and Nixon elevated the everyday reality of the American classroom into a profound philosophical study of human growth, empathy, and institutional socialization.