You Can Go Home Again

Facebook is a wonderful thing… if not for good ol’ FB, the following shoot and total bizarre occurrence would never have happened… 

One day a couple of months ago, an old high school friend, Jennifer Romano Genovese, from my hometown of Jackson, NJ, and I hooked up via FB… Jen messaged me and said “I think I’m living in your old house.”   Whoa.  How cool is that?… Well, even better is going back to my hometown and doing a photo shoot for Jen’s kids in the very house I enjoyed being a kid in… 11 Robert Terrace.

Here’s the Genovese clan on the front lawn… Patrick 12, Megan 10, Lindsay 8, and Michael 6.  These kids are the most energetic, silly, sweet, and loving bunch.

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Jen’s email starts off with MomOfTheMob@ and you can see why…

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Jen is an incredible mom and loves the job… she said one of her favorite moments is when the kids are all at the table having breakfast in their pj’s. So of course we shot that!

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Little toes, bruised legs, and poptart crumbs on the floor… childhood.

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One of my favorites…

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Now take a good look at this front lawn where the girls are having such a great time…

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This is the same front lawn where I cart-wheeled often, once got chased by my Uncle brandishing a yard rake when I cursed, built snowmen with my brothers, buried the family dog, rolled down the hill, and lay in the grass looking up at the sky.

This is my little cousin, Sunshine, and me circa August, 1981 on the front lawn holding tissue flowers we got that day at Six Flag’s Great Adventure. 

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Here’s a pic of my BFF, Sandy Marut, and me during one of our fine performances on the front lawn.  We were obsessed with performing dances, cheers, soccer tricks and whatever other act we could drag our moms to watch and applaud. (ps. This pic was shot with that Polaroid camera I mentioned in this post.) 

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Jen called me up teary-eyed last night and said how much she loves the pics and how she loves living in that house.  I never thought I would be back at 11 Robert Terrace as an adult, especially not photographing another family living there, and especially not as part of a business trip as a professional photographer.  Thank you Jen… this was such a unique and meaningful shoot for me, and I couldn’t have been happier to be back home again…

…and just a hundred yards or so away from my elementary school where I first learned photography in a janitor-closet-turned-darkroom.  Ah, a story for another time

xo,

Christa