Boardwalk

Max Farago's self-published Boardwalk is an unruly document of a decade spent photographing the far West Coast of America, taking the temperature of a culture running on plastic, impulse, and image-saturation.

The book moves through surfers, addicts, fluid sexuality, take-out food, corporations, and roadside coincidence, assembling a loose, diaristic portrait of California as the internet accelerated the careless spread of images. Published in Los Angeles in 2017 as a spiral-bound softcover of 174 pages, it was released in a signed edition of 200 copies and debuted at Dashwood Books in New York before touring to the Yvon Lambert Bookshop and Claire de Rouen Books in Paris.

Farago works across fashion and editorial photography, and Boardwalk compiles roughly ten years of personal, off-assignment images shot along the coast. The book sits among a current of diaristic, vernacular American photobooks that treat the beach and its fringe characters as a barometer for national mood.