Brian Kaplan
We are very pleased to feature the works of Brian Kaplan. Brian is a Boston/Cape Cod based photographer and attorney and at times an arts administrator. I first became acquainted with Brian’s work when he and I had the pleasure of sharing walls in the Danforth Museum’s New England Photo biennial in 2014. I was immediately drawn to this project. Not only because the images were interesting and beautiful but because they spoke, in a respectful way, to the inequality we see in our societies around us. Here in New England where many of us are privileged to indulge in beachy good times and good food and glorious summer-scapes. We enjoy the benefits of the tourism industry. I do also hope that those tourists visiting Cape Cod enjoy it.
Brian’s documentary series reminds us that these delights are provided to us by folks who’s lives are continually in flux to provide for their families, often times thousands of miles from the lovely beaches of Cape Cod. For myself, working in mutual aid for some time now and seeing that the issues of inequality and social separation seem more intense than ever. I felt like this beautiful summer was an appropriate time to share this thought provoking project in a very New England setting. Additionally, these photo works are beautiful, abstract, balanced, even amusing at times. Brian’s book, I’m Not On Your Vacation is Published by Kehrer Verlag and is featured in the Guardian and What Will You Remember. Find the book through Brian - Steven Duede
I’m Not on your vacation
Brian Kaplan’s work has come to define how I look at summer on the Cape. An upended ice cream cone spilling through a parking lot while proclaiming “Joy”? Absolutely.
These images are not picturesque in a postcard sense, but they are poetic. The first I saw from the series remains one of my favorites. A pile of tube televisions heaped in a parking lot, between a motel and a dumpster, with snow on the ground. There is so much in that one image, most prominently the televisions as a symbol of obsolescence—outdated technology cast off and about to be replaced. All the symbols of the off-season in a vacation destination hover around the televisions—the empty parking lot, grey skies, snow on the ground.
It’s not a vacation, and the places and people Kaplan captures in this series are not on your vacation. They make your vacation happen, their labor allows you to put aside your day-to-dayroutine. The photographs document the people behind the scenes of a vacation destination, jobs that are increasingly difficult to fill in the years since the series started. They also capture the aftermath of leisure—spent fireworks, motel signs wrapped up for the season, abandoned nips on a mini golf course that has seen better days. The landscape is empty and still, waiting for the next season but out of reach, like a classic view of the ocean seen through a salt spray spattered motel window.
Jessica Roscio
Director and Curator, Danforth Art Museum
They work the deep-fryers, make sandwiches in the kitchens. scrub the floors, toilets in the motels & rental cottages. Many work two or three jobs, earning more money in a week than they could in a month back home.
I’m not on your vacation
Cape Cod is known as a place to go for a summer vacation by the sea. Sun-drenched days at the beach, splashing in the ocean, and just being lazy. Overindulging on oysters, fried clams, and ice cream. Sipping cold beer or a cocktail while the sun sets. I’m much more interested in the “other side” of life on the Cape.
There are the seasonal workers: thousands of people who flock to the Cape every summer, not to play but to work. They come from Jamaica and from eastern Europe – students from Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Moldova. They work the deep-fryers and make sandwiches in the kitchens. They scrub the floors and toilets in the motels and rental cottages. Many work two or three jobs at a time, earning more money in a week than they could in a month back home.
There are the locals and the transplants – oftentimes, those who are drawn to live, year-round, in an “end-of-the-road” place like the outermost Cape. And, then there’s the long “off season.” In July and August, the population of the small towns on the outer Cape explodes tenfold. But, summer is short. Come fall and winter, there’s a mass exodus. The vacationers have gone home. Summer cottages are boarded up. Motels and clam shacks shut down for the long “off season.” The coastline is pummeled by storms. It’s quiet, lonely and raw.
-Brian Kaplan
Brian Kaplan and friend
Brian Kaplan is a Boston-based photographer. He developed a passion for photography while working for three years as the research assistant and darkroom assistant to Stan Grossfeld, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist at The Boston Globe.
Brian’s project, “I’m Not On Your Vacation,” was published as a monograph in the Fall of 2020 by Kehrer Verlag, and was previously featured in a solo exhibit at Danforth Art Museum. Brian’s work has also been featured in two-person exhibitions at Panopticon Gallery and the St. Botolph Club. And, in group exhibitions at Room 68, the Houston Center for Photography, Provincetown Art Museum, Flash Forward Festival Boston, the Nave Gallery Annex, the Daniel Cooney Gallery’s Emerging Photographers Auction, New Hampshire Institute of Art, New England School of Photography, Schoolhouse Gallery, Stone Crop Gallery, Refraction Gallery, Colson Gallery, AREA, Griffin Museum of Photography, Panopticon Imaging, the Curated Fridge, Boston’s Photographic Resource Center, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Summer Party Auction.
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