Benches of Seaside Heights is photographed in Seaside Heights, NJ, a dilapidated coastal resort best known as the site of MTV’s ‘Jersey Shore’ TV show. Each summer, I candidly photograph the town’s visitors as they relax, eat, and make the best of a day at the beach. I intend to continue this series indefinitely, both as an exploration of human behavior, and a chronicle of Seaside’s visitors over time.

I’ve been going to Seaside since I was too little to walk. It was an uneasy place for a child. Cigarette smoke and the occasional fistfight poured out of stale-smelling bars. Playboy-themed chance games were right next to the childrens’ games I played, like the frog pop. I saw slogans on t-shirts that I did not understand, but somehow I understood that they were obscene. I found it very frightening. However, once I grew older, I started to appreciate Seaside in a different way. With its big fake stucco castle and heavenly-smelling pizza joints, it has a certain unpretentious charm. In the summertime, it draws in huge crowds - tens of thousands of people per week - from across the NYC metro region. It’s a vibrant visual and social landscape. Even though I, like most locals, grumble about the traffic and the noise, I take pride in seeing how much the town is enjoyed, how much diversity it draws in from the surrounding areas. I find it much more interesting than my own neighboring beach town, with its quiet shuffle of regular beachgoers. 

On bright summer days, I walk up and down the mile-long boardwalk, and take at least one candid photo of every single occupied bench. I don’t stop to pause, or think, or try to pick the right moment. Since I work quickly, I don’t see much at the time of capture. I look just enough to ensure that I have a clear shot, but not closely enough to tell, for instance, whether a person is applying deodorant or stretching. I photograph everything, without distinction, and choose the strongest photos later on. 

When editing - a process that can last all winter - I notice  small details that tell stories. An elderly woman wearing a ‘World’s Best Grandma’ t-shirt and a beaded name bracelet made by a child; a wife giving her husband a mean side eye; two proselytizers wearing t-shirts that say ‘Why is the world so divided?”; a big tough muscled man with a huge tattoo of an infant’s head on his right bicep. It’s also interesting to see trends (like Crocs) and similarities between disparate types of people - how many people wear gold cross necklaces, or Yankees baseball caps (a lot!!). 

Continuing this series into the future, I see it as a way to quantify the passage of time, to break it down into little parts and small details, and use those details to make observations about people and about society. These images not only entertain me, but also tell a story about human behavior, about my community, and more generally, about life today.