Cherry Hill: A Childhood Reimagined

by Jona Frank, Laura Dern (Contribution by), Imogene Wolodarsky (Contribution by)

Overview

A memoir told in captivating stories and poignant images, Cherry Hill combines the talents of photographer Jona Frank and Academy-Award winner Laura Dern to tell the story of one girl's youthful struggle and deliverance

Told in words and evocative photographs, Frank's account of her childhood struggles with a repressive mother, mentally ill brother, and overwhelming expectations is leavened with episodes from her rich interior world.

Akin to a graphic novel, this hybrid of personal essay and photography breaks open the memoir format, detailing the life of a young artist as she spends her days dreaming of a friendship with Emily Dickinson, longing for Bruce Springsteen and eschewing the rules of femininity.

Frank employs a cinematic approach to construct vivid scenes from her youth. Using elaborately dressed sets, era-specific wardrobes, and multiple actors to portray herself as a child, Frank refashions her memories into vibrant tableaux.

Strikingly, Frank cast Academy Award-winning actor Laura Dern in the role of her strict and complicated mother in a performance as bravura as her film and television work. As Frank outgrows the confines of her environment and suffocating domestic life, discovering art and photography as the path to her personal fulfillment, she plots her ultimate escape.

A unique photographic storytelling project reminiscent of such classics as Fun Home and The Best We Could Do, Cherry Hill is an intimate self-portrait of what it takes to break free of convention and answer the question, "Who am I meant to be?"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580935586
Publisher:	The Monacelli Press
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	1,063,397
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jona Frank (b. 1966, Camden, NJ) grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, the daughter of an accountant and homemaker. Her previous books include High School (2004), Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League (2008), and The Modern Kids (2016). Frank's photographs have appeared in print and online publications including Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker,& and Mother Jones. Her films and photographs have been exhibited internationally and are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, SFMOMA, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. She lives in Santa Monica, California, where she is beloved for her cherry pie.

Read an Excerpt

Remember
Remember

I am seven. 
In the morning, I stand in my pastel-pink nightgown, press my toes into the carpet and say this to myself over and over, while clenching my whole body. 
My legs spread evenly, my eyes shut tight, my fingers clenched. I try to tense my whole body and feel every muscle. If I try hard enough, maybe I will feel my veins, my blood flowing, my insides.
I like that I could control my body and make it feel something. 
THIS is how tensing my legs feels at seven. 

Remember
Remember

This moment.
This morning.
The warm sun on my face.
This time.
I feel like if I could strain hard enough I could make my body remember.

My brother Bobby sits at the kitchen table, the pieces of the Visible Man spread out in front of him. 
The Visible Man has no skin, no covering. His veins are blue and red, his organs pink.
Everything looks twisted and complex under his sturdy transparent skeleton. 
Everything has a place. 
I am made up of all these parts? 

Remember
Remember

I am made up of all these parts.

Early scenes of my mother. 
These memories haunt me. 
I want to be rid of them. 
I wish—have always wished—that I could wipe them away. 
She watches me while I look at her, study her. She looks concerned. Tired. Faraway. Her hair is dark. Her skin is soft, but her eyes are distant. I am her girl. Her prize. I complete her picture. I need her. I want to be close to her.
And, as a very young child, I have this persistent thought:
“Why this family? Why her? I will do what I can, but this time it’s for me.”
Who was I telling? 
Who was following me? 
What was I thinking? 
There was this sense of an other—not an imaginary friend. 
Not a frightening presence, but a watchful one. 
She doesn’t interfere. Instead she gently reminds me that there is another choice, another progression. I accept her and keep her secret. I never tell anyone about her. Only I can see her, hear her. 

I play church with my brother Mark. We arrange the dining room chairs like church pews and fill the seats with my stuffed animals to create our attentive congregation. 
We use Neccos as our Communion wafers and place them carefully on a dessert plate. 
Mark drapes his body in a bath towel and folds a tissue around the neck of his t-shirt to mimic the clerical collar. He blesses the Necco wafers, holds them up and declares, 
“This is the Body of Christ.” 

Remember 
Remember

Editorial Reviews

The detail is exquisite, sometimes excruciating: the bleeding edge of peeled apple skin as the mother, her face tight, makes yet another pie.” -Dana Goodyear, The New Yorker

“In Cherry Hill, [Frank's] own pictures constitute a fully equal component of the memoir, as artfully composed as the accompanying text. . . . Cherry Hill resembles a dream, because like any artist, the young Jona was a dreamer." -Arthur Lubow, The New York Times

“It’s like holding a film in your hands.” - Laura Dern

“Enlisting Laura Dern to play your mother in a multimedia memoir is what one might call “a mood”—and executed here to brilliant effect.” -Vanity Fair

“[A] remarkable memoir-monograph hybrid . . . an astonishing book.” -Shelf Awareness, starred review

“In this eerily gorgeous and fascinating photo book/memoir, photographer Frank has re-created scenes from her own youth in Cherry Hill, New Jersey in the 1970s and ‘80s. [All] the trappings of the period are captured in Frank’s vividly colorful pictures.” -Kirkus Reviews

"Truly the most satisfying memoir I have ever seen or read. Brilliant and beautiful and weird, Cherry Hill is like entering someone's dreams." -Hanna Rosin, host of NPR's Invisibilia

"Jona Frank’s photographs decant whole narratives; her prose unfurls in vivid scenes. You may (and probably won’t be able to help but) fly through this heart-brimming bildungs-memoir in a single extended sitting, but that’s just the start. The experience will likely haunt you for days and grace your life long thereafter. Remember, Remember, child Jona’s inner voice thrums throughout the story, desperately. And thanks to the adult Jona’s liberating act of reclamatory witness we do!" - Lawrence Weschler, author of Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

"With characteristic humor and compassion, photographer Jona Frank uses her medium to capture and reframe that which so often remains unseen: the interior landscapes that define our childhood and, in turn, our sense of self. Cherry Hill conveys the monumentality of the everyday, and speaks to the all-too-often underestimated superpower of simply noticing." - Anne Collins Goodyear, Co-director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

“Reminiscent of a graphic novel and shot in a striking cinematic style, the imagery is vibrant and evocative. . . . Frank captures the tension of the time and readers can feel the tangible pressure she felt as a young girl looking to find her place in the world.” - Homes & Interiors Scotland

“Gorgeous and cool, Jona Frank’s photography collection, “Cherry Hill,” features the actress Laura Dern posed in a variety of situations, evocative of the artist’s own childhood. Could this be a new genre, the photographic memoir?” - Campus Circle

“Noteworthy.” - The Criterion Collection

“Through lavish set design and a cast of actors, Cherry Hill is a coming-of-tale tale about a child'struggling with the confinements of domestic life.” - It’s Nice That

“Every once in a long while, a photobook can take you on a deep and meaningful journey; visually, emotionally, intellectually. Cherry Hill - A Childhood Reimagined by the incredibly talented Jona Frank is one of those books. . . . An astonishing, complex, original, and beautiful memoir.” -Elinor Carucci, artist

“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.” -Photomonitor

“Starring the inimitable Laura Dern, the 200 carefully staged photographs look to delineate the artist's growing up with a repressive mother figure and even more repressive expectations by cranking the white picket fence idealism up to 11 and thus rendering such false utopias ridiculous. . . . . Above all, the book looks to show the universal through the personal, presenting the struggles of girls grown-up and finding their place in both the family and in the world.” - Creative Boom

“Combine[s] text and image, playing on the rich associations of photography with truth and memory to tell personal histories.” -photo-eye

“The photographs are heartfelt but amusing. They could be straight out of a soap opera, if the episodes were soulful rather than facetious.” -artillery

“Akin to a graphic novel, this hybrid of personal essay and photography breaks open the memoir format.” -The Eye of Photography

“This book digs deep into one woman’s journey, yet, we come away with a story for all.” -Grenade in a Jar

From the Publisher