Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954

Nat Ward’s timeless photographs of Montauk’s most famous beach, Ditch Plains, tell the naked, unedited stories of who we are when the sand is a stage: sensual beings, social creatures, dramatic actors, those who want and wish to be wanted, those who look, and those who wish to be looked at. Featuring forty-nine panoramic photographs, Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954 revels in a place where pleasure is paramount, divisions disappear, and everyone is welcome to crowd in together on the sand and stare, however impolite it may be. Legendary musician Rufus Wainwright and his husband Jörn Weisbrodt as well as writer Wayne Koestenbaum contribute heartfelt essays.

Stumbling down a makeshift path through a sand cliff in 2018, Ward found the crowded, raucous reality of Ditch Plains, Montauk’s most famous surf beach. It’s a place where families, surfers, retirees, artists and writers, social media influencers, contractors, landscapers, celebrities, and day traders all crush together on the rocky shore for a day. This books brings to light the high/low culture on a beach known for being a low-key celebrity hideout. Emblematic of a laid back fishing village that became swanky. It is a place where politics are more unseemly than naked flesh, where human pleasure is sought out in public view. Struck by this libertine opposition to antagonistic norms, Ward photographed the denizens of Ditch every day for four summers. In the process, Ward became a fully-fledged member of the eclectic tribe: a half-naked, long-haired character with a clown camera that no one could miss.

The photographs in DITCH: MONTAUK, NY 11954 navigate the trickier engagements of looking and being looked at: the epic sweep of multiple dramas playing out across the sand, the confrontations, the seductions, the freedom to be a body amongst other bodies splayed in public, the hints at desire and reticence, the skin, the sun, the heat, the salt, the slippages of masculinity and femininity performed, the lounging in a way that purposefully conceals or reveals, the unexpected and clarion gestures of children, the futility in the drive to hold on to youthful appearance, and the inevitable process of aging toward an entropic end.

Ward’s panoramas are inspired by the visual energy of American photographic masters Helen Levitt, Weegee, and Lisette Model, along with Italian Neorealist standouts like Vittorio de Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves and Rossellini’s Rome, Open City.

Legendary musician, queer icon, and long-time Montauk resident Rufus Wainwright contributes an introduction in collaboration with his husband, Jorn Weisbrodt, that provides insight into the history of Montauk and delves into the intimate, social, and psychological realities of the beach as featured in Ward’s panoramic efforts. And a signal afterword by renowned poet, iconoclast, and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum parses the visceral, sensual pleasure to be found in these images while also leaning into the idea that pleasure of this sort must serve as an inspiration toward a radical departure from the monomania and divisive strife of everyday life.