Overview

Class of 2015 is a longitudinal portrait project comprising photographs and video interviews that examine the development of personal identity among a group of students from the class of 2015 at Hamilton College. Robert Knight began this series in 2011, when he started teaching as an assistant professor of art at Hamilton. Knight sought to acquaint himself with the community by photographing a cohort of similarly new faces: the freshman class.  Thirty-nine students from a diverse range of cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds, and with different academic and personal interests, responded to an open call to be photographed and interviewed each year during their time at Hamilton. With their subjects posed in various campus locations and engaged in activities that describe their college experience, the portraits offer a glimpse into each student’s changing identity at this formative time in their lives.

Robert Knight, Assistant Professor of Art at Hamilton College, received a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include In God’s House at the Porter Butts Gallery (Madison, WI), Sleepless at the Danforth Museum of Art (Framingham, MA), and Rated G at Gallery Kayafas (Boston, MA).