By Alexander Rivero, Staff Writer

Some years ago, while working on a cover for an issue of Popular Photography, photographer and Mt. Arlington native Brian Klutch came across a feature on the DJI Mavic Pro, a top-of-the-line portable drone that had just come out onto the market. He was so impressed with the device’s photographic capabilities that he purchased one for himself. Almost immediately, the wheels in his head began to turn.

“I thought it would be a great idea to photograph the lake,” says Klutch, “but in a way that no one had ever photographed it.” 


The lake in question was none other than Lake Hopatcong, the largest lake in the state of New Jersey and home to countless of Klutch’s most cherished memories growing up. The photographs he took ended up filling a beautiful book, LH365, which is available now.

“Too many memories to list in one place,” he says, “but I can still remember the late- night dinners, the slow rides home on the boat, water-skiing at five in the morning, all of these beautiful, indelible memories I have from my childhood that have taken on a beautiful quality as you grow older.”

By the time Klutch purchased the Mavic Pro, he had already been a veteran photographer of twenty years. He had studied photography in college, had started his own business in Manhattan—Brian Klutch Photography in the heart of midtown—and had been working steadily taking still-life photographs of cosmetics, food, jewelry, and doing freelance work for magazines. He also did editorial work.

“I felt that I was at a point in my creativity where I was able to finally give something back with my art,” says Klutch. “It’s the largest lake in the state, and a lot of people don’t really know it even exists, but for many, including myself, it’s a place of great significance.”

Klutch’s parents, each of whom is from Green Point, Brooklyn, bought a bungalow in Mt. Arlington, by the lake, when they were newlyweds. They loved the area so much that they ended up moving there to raise their children. Klutch, who also spent time living in Brooklyn— twelve years to be precise—saw a chance to return to the Lake Hopatcong area and raise his own family.

Klutch points out that the word “Hopatcong” itself is a Native American term for “lake of many coves”, and indeed, the lake has plenty of them, spreading out across five different townships—Roxbury, Jefferson, Andover, Hopatcong, and Mt. Arlington.

From the beginning, Klutch knew that he would take his time with the project, allowing himself the joy of capturing the lake and its surroundings in each of the four seasons. Still, he was aware of the fact that, given the sharp differences in visual texture between summer and winter, there was always the risk of coming out with a book that was perhaps too abstract.

“I wanted to create as comprehensive a visual bio of the lake as I could, and there was no question on whether I was going to take my time with it. I had to in order to truly capture it all. I had to get the different seasons. But at the same time, I wanted the book to be approachable, not pretentious. I absolutely love abstract images, but I wanted the people, like me, who have had so many wonderful times at this lake to look at this book fondly, to remember the lake they knew while they were growing up, and not as some experimental exercise where the lake would be unrecognizable.”

Of specific interest to Klutch were the visual splendor of the breaking ice in the winter, and the beauty with which the camera captured it.

“The lake freezes, and on some years we get great ice. In my commercial work, I focus on color and texture, but here, in this project, I was paying a lot of attention to texture, and the winter shots—with the cracks in the ice, the tracks in the snow, the breaks in the ice—were just great for that, more so than the other seasons.”

The book’s introduction lays the groundwork for what is to follow, confirming what we already suspect—that this is definitely a labor of love:

 “There is a treasure trove of relatively unknown freshwater lakes in the state of New Jersey, and this is a love letter to the greatest of them all.”

The book, LH365, is available for sale. If interested in a copy, please visit www.klutchfineart.com. Limited edition individual prints of Lake Hopatcong, also from LH365, will be available this summer.