Brian Kaplan: I'm Not On Your Vacation

Brian Kaplan: I’m Not On Your Vacation by Aline SmithsonJuly 11, 2013

I’ve spent a lot of time on Cape Cod over the years and am often struck by how this beautiful slice of land becomes overrun by summer tourists and traffic, and have imagined what it might be like when the natural world is center stage during the rest of the year. Photographer Brian Kaplan is capturing just that with his series, I’m Not On Your Vacation. Shot with a 4×5, his images reflect what happens off season, “when the population plummets, cottages are boarded up, motels and clam shacks shut down, and it’s quiet, lonely and raw – after the tourists have gone home.”

He is also exploring the tension between man and nature on a stark, narrow spit of sand that extends into the ocean and looking at the people who live and work on Cape Cod, many from Eastern Europe and Jamaica.

I’m Not On Your Vacation was recently featured in an exhibition at the Panopticon Gallery in Boston, select images are currently on display at the Griffin Museum, and Brian will have a solo show of the work at the Danforth Art Museum this coming winter.

Brian spent three years as an assistant to a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist at The Boston Globe. His photographs have also been exhibited at the Danforth Art Museum, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Houston Center for Photography, Stone Crop Gallery, St. Botolph Club, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Schoolhouse Gallery, and in the Magenta Foundation’s “Flashed” Exhibit.