Campground 086, Winter by Jon Sheridan

Hey, Hot Shot! contender Jon Sheridan's How To Fix A Campground series tells a story and a memory about the farm and camp he grew up on in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He writes,

In the late 1960s, my family converted part of our farm in rural Virginia into a campground. We ran it until 1997, closing it when my father died. My family is now renovating our rundown business. We sort through objects and spend time in ramshackle spaces, remembering when they were new. We tear out old rotting walls and burn the debris; we clear underwood and burn the brush. These pictures are about our day-to-day laboring as we try to reverse entropy. Things fell apart. We are putting them back together again, blending old meaning with new.

His work pays homage to a place that was once greater than its current remnants, as his family simultaneously tries to rebuild their campground to its state of former glory. The images show a place that changes with the seasons, and only survives by the efforts of Sheridan's family. They labor in the snow, at night, and through all states of emotion -- sweeping, sanding, and stacking wood--working by the blueprint of a former place to create a place that will exist in their future. He raises questions about humans' relationship to nature, and what it means to create a meaningful physical space that will also serve as a place in our memories.

See more work from How to Fix a Campground on Jon's website.