Douglas Ljungkvist - Ocean Beach

With his graphic, color-sensitive, and vernacular photographic voice, Douglas Ljungkvist produced a body of work depicting a unique place in the American landscape with strong yet quiet subtexts of time, memory, and identity. He felt the project was ready to publish when Hurricane Sandy hit the Jersey Shore in October 2012 and destroyed cottages that he had recently photographed.  So Ljungkvist began taking pictures again, this time of homes without roofs or walls, with floors full of sand and doors open to the ocean breeze.

"I did not want to spend my vacation there. It's just rows and rows and rows of these tiny cottages in a line. The streets are made of sand, and it's very sparse. There are telephone poles and wires and a Dairy Queen, so what? (…) But I gave in and fell in love with the place." Douglas Ljungkvist Ocean Beach is more than a topographic study of a 1940's New Jersey beach resort.

Douglas Ljungkvist is a Brooklyn based fine art photographer originally from Sweden, which he left at age 25. He is a self taught photographer that switched from a successful marketing career to a full time photographer at the age of 40. His work captures vernacular beauty both in the urban landscape and rural America. Formally he is interested in the study of color, form, and space. His inspirations include painting, history, and anthropology.

Ljungkvist has exhibited at festivals and in galleries both in the US and Europe as well as won several awards for his personal projects. The series Ocean Beach was winner at The New York Photo Festival Invitational 2012 and was exhibited at Dumbo Arts Festival and at New York Photo Festival in the same year. 2013 it was among the winners of PDN Photo Annual. 

New Zealand photo artist and curator Harvey Benge lives and works in Auckland and Paris.
Steve Bisson is an artist, writer, teacher, editor, and founder of Urbanautica.com as well as the online platform Photoexhibitions.org.