Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet’s Summer Camp 1977

9 X 9 INCHES / 120 PAGES   HARDCOVER

FIRST EDITION

$39.95

A companion volume to Shtetl in the Sun, Andy Sweet’s love letter to the colorful Jewish community of late 1970s South Beach, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah chronicles the summer of 1977 at Camp Mountain Lake, serving up a knowing portrait of the era's fashion, pop culture, and frank expressions of adolescent sexuality. Set against the cherished rituals of camp life–from the parade of trunks as 300 campers arrive at Mountain Lake’s rural North Carolina setting to the end-of-August Dionysian frenzy of “Color War”–Sweet's photos tell a classic coming-of-age story, one full of awkward crushes, intense friendships, and the kind of deep truths that emerge over late night, campfire-toasted marshmallows. As the camp’s photography instructor and one its counselors, Sweet brings an intimate familiarity to his subject, capturing the the camp’s daily rhythms through both posed compositions and spontaneous images. “I met Andy Sweet in 1978 when I traveled to Miami,” fellow photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who worked closely with Sweet, remarked after his passing in 1982. “He may have been younger, but I considered him every bit an equal.” By turns nostalgic, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny, this collection includes a foreword by award-winning Miami arts journalist Brett Sokol and an introductory essay by New Yorker magazine staff writer Naomi Fry.