This gallery features photos taken by campers during the 2024 HFH Summer Camps season. Inspired by volunteer Daniel Friedland—who’s continuing the family tradition of his older siblings volunteering at camp—this project gave campers a chance to capture camp through their own lens. Enjoy!
Camp has always been a safe space for me to learn more about myself, grow into my independence, and foster new relationships. The camp I attend does not allow phones, so our only method of recording our memories and keeping them alive when the summer is over is through writing and a camera lens. This makes it possible throughout the year to relive my experiences, my emotions, and the connections I made through the pictures my camp counselors send after our summer. They memorialize the time.
HFH Summer Camps provides a summer camp adventure for children experiencing homelessness, and I wanted to help offer a method for recording their memories and keeping them alive after the summer months have gone. During the summer of 2024, I supplied cameras, each with 27 exposures, to the campers at Camp Wakonda. Each camper was also given a notebook to write about their photos to help commemorate these moments and hopefully keep them alive throughout the year! In addition to this digital gallery, which showcases the memories captured by the campers, each child received a memory book that includes their photos alongside additional ones taken by staff, offering a view of the camp season through the campers’ own lens.
I’m so honored to have been a part of this photo experience for the campers at HFH Summer Camps. I hope that these memory books will be the start of many time capsules they can look back on as they continue to move through life and create more memories!
Daniel Friedland, age 16
HFH Summer Camps Volunteer
