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. Located about 80 miles south of New York City, it attracts enormous crowds of summertime visitors, who come from many different ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. 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. I look just long enough to ensure that I have a clear shot, take my photo, and move on.

Later on, I view the photos and get to know the people in them. I notice small details that tell stories. 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 keep track of data across sets of images - for instance, to count how many people wear gold cross necklaces, or Yankees baseball caps (a lot!). 

One of my objectives in going back year after year is to chronicle the passage of time. I saw the town change a lot in a short time, particularly after Superstorm Sandy, and then again after the election of 2016, when conservative slogans suddenly became strident and ubiquitous (Ocean County is the most conservative county in NJ). I realized things would keep changing much more quickly than I realized, and that these changes told a story I did not yet understand yet, but might understand later, with time and perspective.