Columbia College Archives
This series of illustrations draws inspiration from Columbia College and Christian Female College yearbooks and, in later decades, social media, tracing shifts in representation of our student body from the 1950s through the 2020s. These sources, which include posed portraits and candid snapshots, demonstrate how styles and representations have changed over time.
This work began with the existing painted panels from the 1930s and 1940s. The use of flat color, minimal shading, and use of framing was adopted as a visual starting point, creating continuity across decades while allowing each panel to reflect its own historical moment. This restrained approach reduces images to essential shapes and tones, emphasizing silhouettes and composition.
Subtle shifts in posture, styling, cropping, and space echo broader changes in technology, media, and social norms. From the formality of mid-century portraiture to the ease of the 80s and 90s to the rise of technology and change in self-representation in the 2000s, each decade is approached as a distinct visual and cultural illustration of time.
