Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet's Summer Camp 1977
Edited with foreword by Brett Sokol. Introduction by Naomi Fry.
The golden days of tube socks, bunk beds, marshmallows and first crushes: 1970s summer camp, from the photographer behind Shtetl in the Sun
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 of its counselors, Sweet brings an intimate familiarity to his subject, capturing the rhythms of the camp's daily life through both posed compositions and spontaneous images. 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 staff writer Naomi Fry.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet's Summer Camp 1977.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Flaunt
Rae Niwa
Bunk beds, rope swings, lap swims, kiss and tells. Whether you’ve personally experienced it or not, the notion of summer camp is burned into the American psyche like a 96 degree day. Enter Andy Sweet’s nostalgic new imprint, "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet’s Summer Camp 1977"... The perfect antidote to Covid-19’s consummate summer camp cancelations far and wide.
T Magazine
Nadja Spiegelman
...The smell of sunscreen and wood cabins wafts from the pages. High socks and short shorts, amber sunglasses and halos of curly hair — the nostalgia is for all summers, including this one, the summer we may never have.
WWD
Rebecca Kleinman
As summer camps are canceled, at least unhappy campers can leaf through a new photography book about the beloved, parent-free ritual. Today’s Gen Z campers will get a chuckle at their forebears’ fashion sense in “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet’s Summer Camp 1977.”
Miami New Times
Suzannah Friscia
Sweet had a knack for shining a light on the communities he knew best, and for portraying each of them at a precise, fleeting moment in time. For the summer-camp photos, that meant capturing his teen and preteen subjects in all their awkward, confused glory, existing in the space between childhood and adulthood.
Elephant
Emily Gosling
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah is Andy Sweet’s heart-warming, humorous love letter to long hot summers, first crushes and the sensations of pre-teendom.
Feature Shoot
Miss Rosen
These photographs, made just five years before Sweet’s death at the age of 28, tell the story not only of campers driven in search of themselves but of a photographer who reveled in the joys of life. Imbued with am understanding that the anthropological aspect is ever present in the work, Sweet made photographs that contextualized the universal human condition within the mores of the American ‘70s.
Tablet
Marjorie Ingall
The late photographer Andy Sweet’s chronicle of the summer of 1977 at a Jewish camp in North Carolina ... Full of tube socks, feathered hair, and T-shirts reading “I Love the Fonz” and “CB Freak.”
Jewish Review of Books
Jesse Bernstein
What more truthful account can there be of life at a Jewish summer camp in 1977 than two long-haired Jewish adolescents wearing T-shirts with images of the Fonz and Elvis Presley? The King died at the end of that summer, and I found myself wondering whether the boy felt like wearing the shirt afterward [...] Summer camp in the 1970s was not some lost Eden, though it’s hard not to think so while looking at these pictures during this summer of COVID. Rather, [Andy] Sweet’s photos capture American Jewish life in motion.
Art In America
Hannah Stamler
The adolescence preserved here is Jewish and pure 1970s. (If the tube socks and indoor smoking are not period giveaways, a camper wearing a shirt that says i love the fonz surely is.) Its charm, however, is far more universal. In Sweet’s pools, canteens, and baseball fields, you can almost feel the cling of a swimsuit on wet skin, almost taste the ketchup on a hot dog, almost smell the scent of fresh-cut grass. Sweet has left behind a gorgeous record of American summertime, or at least our collective fantasy of it.
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Last summer, kids the world over missed out on the universal heaven/hell experience of summer camp. We couldn't be happier to feature one of our favorite summertime staff picks of all time, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet's Summer Camp 1977. Collecting 109 gloriously addictive photographs made over the summer of 1977, when Sweet was the photography instructor and a counselor at Camp Mountain Lake in North Carolina, this is both the greatest memory trigger a former camper could ever wish for, and a book to to celebrate the reopening of camps across the country. Never have feathered hair, terry cloth, sweat bands and tube socks looked so fresh. These are photographs of kids—and counselors—living the high life, at their happiest and most independent, made by a person who was in love with summer camp himself. continue to blog
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah: Andy Sweet's Summer Camp 1977
Published by Letter16 Press. Edited with foreword by Brett Sokol. Introduction by Naomi Fry.
The golden days of tube socks, bunk beds, marshmallows and first crushes: 1970s summer camp, from the photographer behind Shtetl in the Sun
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 of its counselors, Sweet brings an intimate familiarity to his subject, capturing the rhythms of the camp's daily life through both posed compositions and spontaneous images. 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 staff writer Naomi Fry.
