Blink, a day passes, blink, a year, two, ten. Time is an unstoppable force we have to live with and to highlight its passage, photographer Josephine Sittenfeld has recreated the portraits of her college classmates she took in 2000.
During those days, Sittenfeld was a junior at Princeton University. She took portrait photography shots of her friends on medium-format film, and the pictures eventually ended up collecting dust in her parents' closet. But last spring, as her fifteen-year college reunion was approaching, she remembered the cool photos and decided to do a then and now follow-up during the event.
The result is "Reunion," a series of before-and-after shots that have almost the same feel as class gatherings themselves. The photo series shows a fast-forwarded transformation of the individuals rather than a gradual long-term change. "At twenty, I felt something intangible, indescribable, full of energy," Sittenfeld's former roommate said during the friends' reunion. "Only now am I able to describe it—the ultimate sensing of life ahead." In the later shots, people in front of the lens look less resistant to their intimacy. Shoulders back, bodies less tense. Could it be because of the reminiscence of everything that came before, or is it how aging gracefully looks?
