It is the week of the US elections 2020. A familiar anxiety is growing as I watch the chaos and uncertainty of it all unfold from my home in England. Turning off the newsfeeds I retreat to a different American story, Cherry Hill: A Childhood Reimagined, the memoir of photographer Jona Frank.
The writing and photographs together tell a story of what it was to be a girl, and specifically a girl artist, growing up in suburban America with its offer of safety, stability and traditional values.
The photographs are lushly cinematic; staged with actors – including Laura Dern as her mother – and in locations where 1970s memories are played out. These sit with writing about growing up, sexuality, Catholicism, and her complex relationship with her mother. Photography itself is also here. It resides in our childhoods through the way we learn to present ourselves in school portraits and family snapshots. Our memories are often as much from photographs as they are from experiences.
It is an exciting, inventive format with writing that transports you to a girl’s inner life. The photographs are beautifully lit and constructed and you might just find yourself escaping into them, revisiting their details, quietly and on your own, like you did when you were a kid, away from the newsfeeds and vote counting.
Across the river from Cherry Hill sits my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. It is also the home of Joe Biden and I see it on the TV every day. The commentators and interviewers are talking but I struggle to pay attention. All I see is the East Coast light falling over the parking lots, the flags, the faces. I ache with knowing it and wanting it.
Jona’s story speaks to me: the neighbourhoods, Holly Hobbie wallpaper, the specific loneliness of a family not speaking about mental illness. She has an inner voice, another Jona, waiting to step in, to show her herself. She sees pictures before she has the camera to frame them.
On my side of the river I tried everything I could to find my place. I wanted so much to be a part of something. I didn’t know how to be me, how to fit into the world. I watched TV instead.
Like Jona, a photography class in high school put a camera in my hand. Since then my camera has been my tool, my guide. When I wondered who I was, when I looked around me and didn’t see any version of the girl I was, the camera gave me my identity and with it I started to see myself.
In Cherry Hill: A Childhood Reimagined it is on a roadtrip into America where Jona comes alive. Her camera is her way out, her way to herself and to the achingly beautiful world, there to be seen, framed and experienced.
There is no going back to Cherry Hill.
Across the river in Philadelphia the election count continues, and there is hope.
In Jona’s story of herself there is imagination, beauty and adventure.
There is possibility.
In her America, there is hope.
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Reviewed for Photomonitor by Casey Orr
Cherry Hill: A Childhood Reimagined by Jona Frank was published by and is available from Phaidon / The Monacelli Press
