I’m a Brooklyn based photographer, originally from Sweden, 46 years old. The attached images are from a current project titled “Ocean Beach”. My work process and intent is including in the below partial work statement.
The cottages at Ocean Beach (NJ), some might say, are nothing more than glorified trailers, laid out in a symmetrical grid over three sections that total over 2,000 units. The streets, still made up of sand in Unit III, add to the sparse and strong sense of place. There is little vegetation that thrives in this environment made up of sand, wind, and salt.
Photographing there in the off season offers a surreal feeling in its quietness and allows me to de-contextualize the cottages from their vacation purpose. From a formal perspective, colors, geometric shapes, and spatial relationships are studied. Here color helps to create individuality among uniformity. Emotionally, there are strong sub-texts of memory, identity, and time. This includes conceptually using some of the cottage interiors to recreate childhood memories and fragmented pseudo self-portraits by adding vintage or personal items to explore what it might have looked like had I vacationed at Ocean Beach growing up.
The interiors have hardly any decorations creating an abstract time stamp and few clues as to who the owners are. Most cottages are rented on a weekly basis in the summer thus making them into semi-public spaces, similar to hotel rooms. The bedrooms are utilitarian in nature and minimal in size to where they straddle the line between intimate and claustrophobic. I am drawn to the horizontal windows that match the camera frame but won’t hold an air conditioning unit.
Like an anthropologist or visual historian I seek to document the cottages that are still stuck in a different era when wood paneling, vibrant colors, and kitsch decorations were the order of the day. Today most cottages are updated with neutral colors, flat screen TV’s, wifi networks, and other conveniences.
This project is a study of a unique place in the American landscape, and self discovery journey, that appeals to my vernacular taste, intuitive work process, and sense of style and order.
Douglas Ljungkvist
