Fun can take many forms. An ice ritual at the end of the day. Caring for rescued chickens. A bubble bath for a lifeless friend. Three photographers show us what a good time means for them now.
Jolie Ruben and
Mark Sommerfeld
Mark Sommerfeld found it in his parents’ Ontario home, where “big dinners, movies and games were the main focus,” Jenga said. He also had his own fun in his Queens apartment: “Spontaneity, both simple and laborious, is my new fun and has included juggling eggs, bubble baths for a lifeless friend, playing board games, reading in nature and sending snail mail. “
Sheida Soleimani
Sheida Soleimani, a Providence, RI photographer, says she started doing “tedious but beautiful jobs like plucking dandelions from the ground, separating the petals from the calyx, and fermenting them with yeast in an airlocked jar “. She also began caring for rescued chickens: “Rehabilitating birds was definitely a coping mechanism, but also a way of caring for and healing things at a time when everything felt completely incurable.”
Soleimani began taking these photos “to document these forays and efforts to find out what we were doing one week or another.”
Elizabeth Weinberg
Los Angeles-based Elizabeth Weinberg says she and her son Oscar “started getting milkshakes at Foster’s Freeze as the ultimate end-of-day treat”.
“There’s something magical and surreal about this place, an old-fashioned ice cream stand in Los Angeles that is on fire with neon,” she said. “A beacon – no matter how small – of something to look forward to can go such a long way for a child.”
Weinberg drove through Los Angeles alone with her Volkswagen Thing in 1974. “This car is ridiculous, unsafe, without features, slow, noticeable and perfect for me. I can only play music on an old boombox that records tapes. The speedometer does not work. The gas gauge doesn’t work, ”she said. “It is wonderful.”