Jona Frank didn't know that she was an artist until she got to college, although "ever since elementary school, I'd seen pictures floating in front of me." In Cherry Hill: A Childhood Reimagined, Frank's remarkable memoir-monograph hybrid, the floating pictures have become photographic reenactments, with actors--including a bewigged Laura Dern--standing in for family and friends.
Most of the photos in Cherry Hill come across as faithful re-creations of scenes from Frank's middle-class childhood in 1970s Cherry Hill, N.J. A black rotary wall phone hangs on green, daisy-stamped wallpaper. Frank's mother, portrayed by Dern, holds a lipstick and looks into the bathroom mirror. Young Frank plays church with one of her brothers ("We use Neccos as our Communion wafers and place them carefully on a dessert plate"). But many of the images have a charged surreality. In one shot, teenage Frank is walking to the school bus stop wearing coveralls and a hard hat; she has grown infatuated with the song "Factory" by Bruce Springsteen, who represents hope that there will be a life for her beyond New Jersey and her controlling mother. "I learned early that things had to be done her way," Frank writes. "Standing up to her--having an opinion of my own or challenging hers--was not an option."
Cherry Hill ends in 1990, when Frank, having graduated from college and briefly returned home, heads west to pursue a creative life. Fortunately, she looked back, and there's an astonishing book to show for it. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer