Description

For an album about the lessons that school never teaches, Lauryn Hill went back to school. She chose Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, her own alma mater, as the location for the shoot. Photographer Eric Johnson photographed her in a classroom, a hallway, a restroom and on a school bus, building a whole visual world around the title.

The final cover took one close-up from those sessions and made it look carved into the surface of an old wooden school desk, the kind covered in initials and doodles by generations of bored students. Her face seems to have been etched by hand into the grain, as if a student had made her portrait during a lesson. The image is warm, brown and slightly worn, and it ties together the album's mix of soul, hip-hop and reggae with the idea of growing up and learning hard truths.

Hill was deeply involved. Sony art director Erwin Gorostiza later said she was more involved with her imagery than any artist he had worked with, and he insisted she receive art direction credit equal to his own. The school theme carried into the television teasers for the album, which was released in August 1998. The cover has since appeared on many lists of the greatest hip-hop and R&B album covers.

Credit

Photography by Eric Johnson; art direction by Erwin Gorostiza and Lauryn Hill