It starts as an empty room. We give it a name. Four walls that become a foundation for whatever purpose we deem it to serve. A classroom, for example, was once an empty space. Now it’s full of chairs. Desks. Teachers. Students. Is it still a classroom without its chairs? Without its desks? Without its teachers? Without its students? It is we as humans who make up a space; a space does not make us up.

Acclaimed independent publisher Loose Joints presents The Classroom, a stylized photo book showcasing Moroccan artist Hicham Benohoud's collaboration with his students in the late 90s. The book centers on individuality and creativity within the classroom as a concept. The book, which will be released on March 27th, features a variety of stark black-and-white images that he had created with his students at the time. The photographs vary from haunting head-on portraits to striking images of a student hanging off the edge of a desk. Benohoud incorporates physical props and art pieces—handmade paper frames and tape structures—into his photographs, subverting their constraining nature to express individuality and creativity, thus rejecting conformity. Benohoud’s photographs as a whole reject Morocco’s strict and uniform education system put forth by a post-colonial world.

The Classroom is a timeless representation of our relationship with spaces and institutions, as well as their aspects of both conformity and freedom as these spaces evolve. The book emphasizes the looming presence of conformity by photographing all the images in black and white, a juxtaposition to the perceived energy of a space of enrichment, learning, and youth, many times, also imagined as a room full of color. The themes of confinement and rigidness are also embedded in the images. Some feature students holding cut-out frames that surround another subject in the photo, sometimes even covering their faces. Benohoud’s photographs, while uncanny and dystopian on the surface, feature symbols of hope and the subjects channeling creativity in a uniform world. Whether it's students in the photo hanging off a desk while the rest of the room continues on or its actual aspects of the space that are not uniform, creativity and individuality within the classroom cannot be simply wiped away. Not by a structure. Not by another human being. And certainly not by an institution.

The Classroom by Hicham Benohoud is published by Loose Joints.