Left Behind, 2009
Digital print on archival paper
Frances Myers captured this image of a deserted physics classroom while exploring the vacated corridors inside Sterling Hall, the historic campus landmark whose outdated interior is currently being gutted to restructure and modernize the building. In this photograph, the sagging base of a table, carelessly knocked on its side, lies next to a small pile of scrap wood. From above, a fluorescent fixture, now extinguished, hangs low from the ceiling. The hazy afternoon sun offers the only light, streaming in through the windows and illuminating the massive glass case, its barren shelves stripped of their artifacts. These remaining objects feature strong diagonal lines, all of which point towards the back of the room where a blackboard remains affixed to the wall, the chalky remnants of past equations still visible across the surface.
Traversing the abandoned hallways, laboratories, and lecture halls, Myers began to think of herself as a field worker undertaking an expedition in salvage archeology, an attempt to capture the extant remains of the site prior to its complete dismantling. And, while the exterior of Sterling Hall will remain largely intact, the extensive internal remodeling will necessarily erase the evidence of its past life. As such, Myers sees her photographs as “site reports” of these original spaces, as records of a bygone era.
