josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Douglas Ljungkvist - Ocean Beach, Kehrer Verlag, 2013, Heidelberg

»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. 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. Between 2009 and 2012, Ljungkvist had portrayed more than 60 cottages in Ocean Beach. He felt the project was ready to publish. Then Hurricane Sandy hit the Jersey Shore and destroyed cottages that Ljungkvist had recently photographed.
Douglas Ljungkvist is a Brooklyn based fine art photographer originally from Sweden. He has exhibited at festivals and in galleries in the US and Europe. 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.

Hardcover, texts by Harvey Benge, Steve Bisson.

Pages: 108
Place: Heidelberg
Year: 2013
Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
Size: 24 x 20 cm (approx.)