'School Photos and Their Afterlives'

Most of us would like our high school photos to disappear off the face of the Earth, right? But leave it to artists to find deeper meaning within those images. The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., has organized an exhibition titled “School Photos and Their Afterlives” that takes a critical look “at how a ubiquitous yet unremarked vernacular genre has been used to advance ideologies of assimilation and exclusion but also to inspire social and political change.” That’s way beyond adolescent worries about acne and bad hair days. The show, which draws upon works in the museum’s permanent collection, pairs an array of school photos “in dialogue” with works by contemporary artists.