Photo Essay

Everyone photographs this town in July. The pier, the queue at the ice cream window, the particular blue that only shows up in August light. I went in November, four years running, because I wanted to know what a place looks like when it stops performing. What I found was not emptiness. It was maintenance. Paint being stripped. Boats up on blocks. A man repairing the same railing in three different years.

The summer population is around forty thousand. In November it is just under two. That ratio is the whole story of the place, and everyone who stays knows it precisely — they will tell you the number before you finish asking. I stopped photographing the empty streets after the first year. The streets were never the point. The point was the people who had the streets to themselves and did not seem to mind.