Kameron and Jeff, Woodbourne, NY
I spent most of the spring in the strange sort of purgatory that follows the kind of grief where you can barely move, let alone get out of bed, the strange sort of purgatory where you are out and about but other people all feel like strangers and nothing could possibly matter, so disconnected but you look so normal from the outside. And then I made some inevitably awful decisions I’d quickly regret and ended up running away from it all and into the stillness of the Catskills.
I was absorbed into the hectic, drama-filled life of a loving family, a family that, like me, was something like “the porridge in the middle” between two extremes. Jewish vacationers came in all stripes, but the most Chassidish stood out. I made pleasant conversation with the ladies at the most pleasant pottery making sessions, but I was drawn to a year-round population with few job options and a raging heroin problem. In my free moments, when I wasn’t strolling past the Yiddish “please no women past this point” signs in the Vizhnitz colony behind the house, I roamed around with my camera and, it being rare free moments and all, made work that has serious flaws from a representational standpoint.
Dressed somewhere in between, I got an earful about how “Orthodox Jews are very nice, but the Hasidics…” An unbreachable disconnect. I tried to advocate for both sides, left out the sensationalistic bits and spoke to our shared humanity, to the way we’re all desperately trapped one way or another, and maybe we’re happier if we can’t see it, or when we find a way to just go numb…
I’ve fallen head over heels for instagram… Please CLICK HERE and take a look!
