Winnie the Pooh and Josh Aronson's "Florida Boys"

Thanks to @dfte, I was referred to this interview with Josh Aronson, and this quotation, which oddly I thought connected to my reading of A. A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner, which I wrote about here.

blockquote “MD: What was the starting point for this body of work? Was there a specific moment that catalyzed the project?

JA: I wanted to reimagine coming-of-age from the perspective of the kids I grew up with, and from my own. So I started making pictures of it, not as nostalgia but as an act of invention. The project grew from that question: What could Florida boyhood look like if it were allowed to be soft, curious, even dreamlike?”

JA: “The Florida we usually see is hyper-sensationalized: Tiger King, ‘Florida Man,’ spring-break chaos. I’m trying to show something else. My images imagine a Florida populated by tenderness, empathy, and friendship. Is that a real place? Maybe not yet. But photography lets me build it; an alternate South that feels both familiar and aspirational.”