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Artist Statement
CAMP
Killooleet is located in a narrow valley in the Green Mountains of Vermont and is comprised of a manmade lake, a main house with a wrap-around porch, a horse barn, and ten non-winterized red cabins. The campers grow up and move on, but the details never change – potted red geraniums on the dining porch windowsills, ham and potatoes for Wednesday supper, and rutted mud puddles down the center of camp created by 100 campers on bikes. Killooleet is familiar and specific. There is the smell of campfire in dirty hair or of a soggy bathing suit hanging in the cabin rafters. There's also the sound of heavy rain hitting a tin cabin roof or of 130 people belting out the song “Goodnight, Irene.”
Camp is a brief, intense experience filled with change and growth and youthful energy, yet it all transpires on land that is unchanged year after year. This series is about the evolving group of adolescents who come each summer. It is also about the passage of time in a place that remains the same as its inhabitants come and go.
THE AUTISM PROJECT
Ethan, 11, and Jennifer, 10, both live in Western Massachusetts and are on the autism spectrum. For the past year and a half, I have been alternating spending time with these two children and their families. These photographs accompany an hour-long film, Ethan & Jennifer , which celebrates the two children and how wonderfully complex and rich their personalities are, despite, or maybe because of, their unique relationship to the world around them. I see this project as a much longer process, and hope to follow Ethan and Jennifer until they are adults.
My interest in autism began when I worked with autistic students at Ivymount, a special education school outside of Washington D.C. While at Ivymount, I worked in a classroom with twelve adolescent autistic boys who were coping with growing up, emerging hormones, puberty, and complicated questions about their futures. These boys challenged me, but they also introduced me to this whole other world out there – the world of special-needs children and their families, and the eventful and profound lives that they live.
- Jo Sittenfeld
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Click on each image for larger version and caption.
CAMP
 
 
 
 
THE AUTISM PROJECT
 
 
 
 
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