Hills Professional Dog Grooming School, Inglewood, CA

When Catherine Wagner set out “to photograph the diversity of American education within the context of the classroom,” she aimed for more than just the middle school science lab or college lecture hall. Her subjects included an acupuncture classroom, a language lab, a synagogue’s nursery school, an abacus lesson at a Chinese American school, and this image of a dog grooming school, which, like all images in her American Classroom series, is devoid of people. All are sites of serious learning, but Wagner has also found in them an element of irony and humor.