Lindsey Harner

Lindsey Harner

Photography

When I first started this project, it was my first time living back in Cape May County since high school. I had disconnected with most of the great friends from high school; thinking that I was getting out of the small town everyone wanted so badly to leave. The negative stigma surrounding Cape May (the idea that if a local stays there or comes back it means they failed) caused bitter feelings, I was asking myself "what the hell am I going to do and who is there even to talk to?"

As I began the series, I found myself reconnecting with old friends (getting to know them all over again), going to many of the old hangouts and reconnecting with the town itself. Using an iPhone 6, I began taking pictures of my friends whenever we were together. Around the smartphone, everyone's guard was down. I opted out of using my Canon DSLR to keep from disturbing these moments and avoid making my friends feel nervous around such a serious piece of equipment. The project slowly became filled with images from the hangouts, small moments, and snapshots of people that let me back into their life. What seemed like a lonely, abandoned county is now a close-knit town made up of friends, familiar places and faces. These forty 5” x 7” photographs, my visual diary, represents my re-connection to this small town. The prints are pigment based inkjet on Epson paper, printed with an Epson large format printer.

2017

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