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.
Nat Ward lives in Queens, NY. His work is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Parrish Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His previous book of photographs and poetry, Big Throat, was published by +KGP in 2020. Ward founded the collaborative photographic project space A New Nothing with Ben Alper in 2014 and has had features on his photographic work published in Aperture, Interview, Collector Daily, Photobook Journal, Photography & Culture, C4, The British Journal of Photography, Unseen, Vogue, Vogue Italia, Vice, and Juxtapoz. He has exhibited photographic and text-based installations at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York Live Arts, Hampshire College, and The Jewish Museum. Ward has been awarded residencies and fellowships from Yaddo, The Cooper Union Professional Development Fund, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. His poetry and critical writing have appeared in publications from Wendy’s Subway, 1080Press, The Brooklyn Review, and Beautiful Days Press. Ward’s poems appear alongside photographs by Sara J. Winson and Aaron Canopy in Shades, published by Push Pull Editions (2024). Ward holds an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College.
Praised by The New York Times for his “genuine originality,” Rufus Wainwright has established himself as one of the great male vocalists, songwriters, and composers of his generation. The New York-born, Montreal-raised singer-songwriter has released ten studio albums to date, three DVDs, and three live albums including the Grammy nominated Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall. He has collaborated with artists such as Elton John, Burt Bacharach, Miley Cyrus, David Byrne, Boy George, Joni Mitchell, Pet Shop Boys, Heart, Carly Rae Jepsen, Robbie Williams, Jessye Norman, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Sting, Chaka Khan, Brandi Carlile, John Legend, Anohni and producer Mark Ronson, among many others. He has written two operas and numerous songs for movies and TV
Jorn Weisbrodt was born in Hamburg on January 26, 1973. He studied opera directing at the music conservatory "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin. He is married to Rufus Wainwright and currently manages his career and produces his work. Until 2016 he served as the artistic adviser to the Music Center in Los Angeles where he produced a large birthday concert for Joni' Mitchell's 75th birthday that was released as an album and movie across the globe. He was also the inaugural artistic director of ALL ARTS, WNET's 24 hour cultural TV channel and online platform. Between 2012 and 2016 he was the Artistic Director of the Luminato Festival in Toronto where he commissioned and produced new works with artists such as Marina Abramovic, Lemi Ponifasio, Kid Koala, Dana Gingras, Ohad Naharin, and R. Murray Schafer. Before this appointment he was working as the executive director of RW Work Ltd. representing and managing the work of Robert Wilson and as the director of The Watermill Center – a laboratory for Performance founded by Robert Wilson in New York. He has been instrumental in producing productions such as “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” and the worldwide tour and revival of Robert Wilson’s and Philip Glass’ opera Einstein on the Beach. For The Watermill Center he has established partnerships with the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Kampnagel Hamburg, the Donaufestival in Krems, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Performa, the Purnati Arts Center in Indonesia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University among others.
Wayne Koestenbaum, poet, critic, fiction-writer, artist, filmmaker, performer—has published 23 books, including Stubble Archipelago, Ultramarine, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). He has exhibited his paintings in solo shows at White Columns, 356 Mission, and the University of the Kentucky Art Museum. His first record, Lounge Act, was released by Ugly Duckling Presse Records in 2017; he has given musical performances of improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, The Walker Art Center, The Artist’s Institute, the Renaissance Society, the Hammer Museum, The Poetry
Project, and the Francis Kite Club. His first feature-length film, The Collective, premiered at UnionDocs (New York) in 2021. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired his literary archive. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
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