Nat Ward Photographs Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk

In 2018, photographer Nat Ward stumbled upon Ditch Plains beach in Montauk, and he found a vibrant energy that he couldn't resist capturing. Ward spent four summers photographing Ditch Plains and the people who enjoy the beach, and he discusses his resulting photo collection, "Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954," featuring 49 photographs that are also on view at Montauk Historical Society's Second House Museum through Labor Day.

*This segment is guest-hosted by Tiffany Hanssen.

Tiffany Hanssen: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart. In 2018, Queens-based photographer Nat Ward walked onto Ditch Plains beach in Montauk and liked what he found. He started taking pictures of beachgoers soaking in the sun, playing in the sand, swimming in the ocean. For years after, Nat kept returning to the ditch. The result of that is a new photography book called Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954. In the book, Nat writes about Ditch, "It was the human world that I desperately needed.

The beach and those people were a reminder, a revitalization, a restoration of faith, and most strikingly, a demonstration of the importance of physical human pleasure sought out in public view." Nat Ward's book is available now. Some photographs in the book are also on view at the Montauk Historical Society through Labor Day. Nat's with us in studio. Welcome.

Nat Ward: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Tiffany Hanssen: Nat and I would love you in this conversation as well. What's your favorite beach in Montauk? What makes it so special? We're sure you have some Montauk stories. 212-433-9692. You can text us, you can call us at that number 212, 433-9692. Let's talk about that quote that I just read here, Nat. I suppose that the beach really is one of the few places where we can see, as you write, physical human pleasure sought out in public view. I was trying to think, like, where, where else would that be? I suppose the pool-

Nat Ward: Sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: -or, I don't know, any place where we're communally gathered, doing a thing that is physical, that is also not together.

Nat Ward: Nightclubs, concerts, that kind of thing.

Tiffany Hanssen: Ski hills.

Nat Ward: Sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: It's an interesting thing to think about that the notion of humans being all physical together in a single space. What makes the beach so special among those places that we just listed off?

Nat Ward: I think it's also the time. In 2018, isolation in our culture and divisive politics felt fresh in a way that maybe it doesn't today, although it's not gotten much better. A place like the beach and in particular Ditch Plains, where all sorts of people crush in together, felt like the opposite of what I was experiencing online or even in my classrooms, to a certain extent. It shocked me. It was surprising. I think that there's something that is the opposite of frictionless about the beach and about Ditch.

Tiffany Hanssen: Describe Ditch for people who-- If you haven't been out to Montauk, you don't know what makes it different from the other beaches in Montauk. We all have this image, I think, of what we mean when we say Montauk beach. Describe it for us.

Nat Ward: Ditch is a surfer's beach. It's also a beach where people set up impromptu barbecues all day long. It's a place where families come from all over the tri-state area and end up out at Ditch. It's a place where families have had bungalows in their families for generations on Ditch. The best way to sum it up is it's the place where I bring my kids to learn how to talk to strangers, because inevitably, the people you're next to, you're becoming friends with for a day.

Tiffany Hanssen: I love that. Beaches are an interesting place for that. You're all kind of like commenting on the world and what you're doing, and your ball flies onto their beach towel, and your Frisbee hits their kid or whatever. You grew up on the Jersey shore, though, however, right?

Nat Ward: Totally.

Tiffany Hanssen: I'm just curious, as a photographer, how you would differentiate between beaches down the shore, which have their own vibe, and specifically, I guess, Ditch.

Nat Ward: I think one of the things that happened was I grew up going down to Island Beach State Park, which does have a different vibe than the rest of the shore. There's no boardwalk. You have to walk through a rather uncomfortable path and get bit by flies and stuff like that.

Tiffany Hanssen: You have to.

Nar Ward: Yes, you absolutely have to. Coming through Shadmoor State Park into Ditch, it was like flashback time for me. It is crowded in the summer, Island Beach State Park is. There's this kind of place you can't take in in one look. It's very different from the rest of the Jersey Shore. It's less of the boardwalk culture, less of the house rental culture, et cetera. Montauk, in particular, Ditch is a place where regulars show up day in and day out. I think that's what really separated it from some of the places I grew up going to was that I would go every single day because I was making this work, and I run into the same people four summers in a row and talk to them for like three hours at a stretch.

That felt really special.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking about the book, Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954. It's a new photograph book by Nat Ward, and we want you to join the conversation with your memories of Ditch beach. Why not? Or any other beach on Montauk. What can you recall about it? What's your favorite? What is a special memory for you? 212-433-9692. You can call us. You can text us at that number. Have you spent much time in the Rockaways, just out of curiosity?

Nat Ward: Oh, yes.

Tiffany Hanssen: I like this getting the different vibe setting from Ditch versus--

Nat Ward: Like Riis Beach.

Tiffany Hanssen: Take Riis Beach. Sure.

Nat Ward: Riis Beach is my beach that I would go to every summer for 15 years.

Tiffany Hanssen: You probably see some commonalities now, though, too, right?

Nat Ward: Absolutely.

Tiffany Hanssen: What would you describe those as?

Nat Ward: It is the level of interaction. I think there are other beaches where you can go and be a few 100 feet away from people, 50 feet away from people, whatever. Riis Beach and Ditch, you really are on top of each other, and you're close. The kind of looking that happens in these Beaches, I think, was something I reflected on a lot. You're constantly looking at people and being looked at. I think that the performances that happen when people are aware that they're being looked at are really interesting.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right, now we got a caller here. We have Thomas in Montclair, New Jersey. Hi, Thomas.

Thomas in Montclair: Hi, how are you?

Tiffany Hanssen: Hi.

Thomas in Montclair: Longtime listener of WNYC and a member. I'm just calling in about our Montauk stories. My fiancé and I are literally just driving back now from the grave site of my great aunt, who had this wonderful house out in Montauk for years. It was this windmill. It was such a special place for my family growing up. We were a middle-class family that wouldn't have had access to Montauk otherwise. My great aunt she was a grandparent to us because both of my parents' sets of parents died before my sister and I were born. She didn't marry or had kids of her own, so we were her grandchildren, basically.

She died last month, unfortunately. She was 93 years old. She loved a wonderful, full life, but she had this house in Montauk, and it was so beautiful. It was a windmill house. People who are familiar with Montauk, they probably have driven past this house. She had us out there every summer, my parents, my sister, and I, and our dog. It was just such a wonderful, magical place for us as children. Like I said, we're just driving back from the grave site now, so it felt very much like kismet that I put on WNYC just pulling out of the grave site, and the very first thing I hear is calling and, "Tell us your stories about Montauk."

I really felt like I had to call in and say. Just missing her a lot today, especially.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you. Thank you, Thomas, for calling in and sharing that with us. Nat, you mentioned your memories of the beach, and so much of what we get at the beach is really burned into us as core memories. I have memories of the beach with my grandmother in Fort Lauderdale, Florida-

Nat Ward: Oh, yes, for sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: -and South Carolina. How did you think that you could tap into that with these photographs, I guess? I'll bring it back around to the book. How did you tap into that nostalgia and that kind of like, "Oh," that?

Nat Ward: Yes, absolutely. I think that the beach can be a really magical place, and it can be really surprising what you can see at the beach. Maybe not while making the pictures, but upon looking at them later on, I'm like, "Oh, this is the kind of place that people have been going to for millennia and doing the exact same things." I would look for people revealing themselves, either looking judgmentally at another person or having their body splayed in a slightly awkward position, but in public.

It's so beautiful to see that freedom that happens at the beach. I think a lot of the nostalgia around your experiences in Florida or mine on the Jersey Shore or down in the Chesapeake Bay have to do with the sensory feeling of the place. I was trying to tap into what it feels like for a body to be in that place.

Tiffany Hanssen: The warmth and the sandiness.

Nat Ward: Completely.

Tiffany Hanssen: We'd love to hear your Montauk stories as well. Nat Ward is a photographer. His new book is Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954. We know you have Montauk memories, and we'd love to hear them. 212-433-9692. You can call us, and you can text us at that number. I'm just curious about the timing here. You arrived in 2018. We'll get to the whole pre-pandemic, post-pandemic.

Nat Ward: For sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: How much did you know about Montauk at that point?

Nat Ward: Almost nothing outside of eternal sunshine and spotless mind. [chuckles] That was my entire context. I had driven out there to see the lighthouse at one point, but I was lucky enough to go on this residency, the Edward F. Albee Foundation residency at The Barn, and I finished up writing for another book project, and I wanted to go to the beach. I had this very strange camera. Enormous panoramic camera. I thought, "Let me see if I can do something strange with it and photograph people instead of the landscape." More the social landscape.

I went down, discovered the beach, and then, upon developing the photographs in my darkroom in Queens and seeing the contact sheets, I realized, oh, these pictures encourage a slower way of looking at pictures, just like being at the beach encourages a much slower way of encountering the stuff of your lived experience. I thought that was really interesting. I went back, and over those years, Montauk became a part of my life. The people, the community, that's what really kept me coming back, were the people I met on the beach and then would see at the restaurant, and then would see at the bar. That was an interesting thing to me in a place that seems so transient.

Tiffany Hanssen: Did you have some sort of preconceived notion about what you thought you were going to experience, and how is it different?

Nat Ward: My notions were colored by my experiences of other places on the east end of Long Island, and Montauk couldn't have been more different. That was another thing that drew me in. It was a place where all kinds of different people show up and stick around for a while. Similar to the neighborhood that I live in. I like the fact that all of my neighbors know each other. [chuckles] Montauk felt like a place where that happens out there.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're going to take a text and a call here when we get back from the break, but I want to get this text in before we break because it's very critical that you hear this, Nat. Judah and Ellie, your children, are very excited to hear their daddy on the radio today.

Nat Ward: Oh, my God, I love you guys. [laughs]

Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking with Nat Ward about his new book of photography called Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954. We'll get back to it and we'll get back to your calls too, here in just a minute. Stay with us. This is All of It.

[music]

Tiffany Hanssen: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanssen, in for Alison Stewart. We're talking with Nat Ward, the Queens-based photographer who has a new book out about Ditch Plains beach in Mont. By the way, Nat, we have unleashed a furor of people who are telling us that it is not Ditch Plains beach, that it is Beach Ditch or Ditch Beach. I'm not sure. I think I'm just going to shorten it to Ditch, and then it will just cover our bases.

Nat Ward: Absolutely.

Tiffany Hanssen: That's the name of the book, and we're talking about it, and we're taking your calls as well. 212-433-9692. Your memories of Montauk. Let's hear from Kelly. Kelly, good afternoon.

Kelly: Good afternoon.

Tiffany Hanssen: You worked on Montauk.

Kelly: I have great memories. Yes. I spent a summer, I think it was the summer of 1981, so it was a long, long time ago. I spent a summer working at the Montauk Yacht Club. It was a great summer job. It was pretty wild. They had employee housing, so I literally was in a room, I think, with five other girls. There were three sets of bunk beds and we worked various jobs, mostly in the restaurants, I think at the yacht club. On days off, I remember I didn't have a car, I had a bicycle out there. I bicycled to the beach, or I bicycled to whatever party was going on, and sometimes bicycling at two o'clock in the morning. I got a lot of great exercise that summer.

Tiffany Hanssen: I bet.

Kelly: The beaches were great. I think that it was shortly after Jaws came out, too, so I remember swimming in the ocean and just sometimes being a little freaked out because I was like, "Really, you're on the furthest point east here. There's nothing between me and the Atlantic Ocean."

Tiffany Hanssen: Kelly, you need to listen to our conversation with the Radiolab folks about 50 years of Jaws. You'll love it. Thanks so much for the memories. Let's talk with Carol here, who is en route to the Berkshires. Hi, Carol.

Carol: Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my call. Yeah. I just wanted to say that my husband, Gary, and I honeymooned in Montauk in Ditch Plains at a group of little cottages called [unintelligible 00:16:32] Cottages. They were two-story, almost shacks. There were little cottages right on the beach. It was just gorgeous. We went to the Shagwong and the Bird on the Roof. I think the Bird on the Roof is still there, from what I've heard. A little coffee, breakfast place. It was just a magical place. Then maybe 10 years later, we went back out, but there was so much traffic, we were discouraged from ever going again.

Tiffany Hanssen: Oh, Carol, that's a bummer, but still a good memory. Thank you, Carol. Nat, I'm curious. I can imagine, for people who look at your book, flip through the pages, it is going to be a little bit of memory lane for some folks.

Nat Ward: Oh, for sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: Did you anticipate that?

Nat Ward: I knew that the people who are in the book, they were going to see themselves in the book. Also, I'm making black and white pictures. I'm making panoramic pictures. I understand at this point what that triggers in someone when they're looking at photographs, but I think that's really special. It's a reminder of what life feels like. Not necessarily like a reduction of that either, because the pictures are complicated and messy with all sorts of seaweed and junk on the ground. It's not the idealized version. It's the beach, the way it looks. I think that if a picture can do that, if it can remind you of what your life felt like and do it a little bit more often, then it's a successful photograph.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text here that says, "My second cousin on my mother's side is the owner of Sam's Star Island Marina in Montauk, and so I spent many summers there with my family, both eating at the local restaurants and fishing off his docks." That sounds heavenly. Another text says, "The bakery, the baker has been there for about 25 years. She's lovely and makes really unique baked goods. You cannot not stop in." We're becoming a travel log here for Montauk.

Nat Ward: Completely. You got to stop by Balsam Farms.

Tiffany Hanssen: I think what that gets at are these core memories for people.

Nat Ward: Totally.

Tiffany Hanssen: It's funny you mentioned the black and white. I wanted to ask you about that because it instantly evokes a like, "Here's a time from another era," for people that are not schooled in the ways of all of the use of light with photography and all of these artistic ins and outs that we could talk about ad nauseam. It's just a feeling that you get when you see a photo in black and white. What was your decision-making around that?

Nat Ward: On a practical level, I'm interested in a process that has zero digital intervention. Everything is physical. The light hitting the film is physical. The film going into the developer is physical. All of that produces real objects. From an aesthetic level, like you're talking about, the way people receive it, I think it's a tricky and maybe sneaky way to get people to look at body language, to look at interactions, to look at facial expression without imagining that it's mimicking life as it is right now in front of them. There's a little bit of a remove, and sometimes you can read into that a bit more and read the expressions and the meaning behind the expressions a bit more easily.

Tiffany Hanssen: We have a text. I was at a hotel at the tip of Montauk one morning, eating breakfast. The hostess directed me to look out the window, and there I saw dolphins jumping in and out of the water. That visceral response that you get when you see dolphins jumping in and out of the water, or you get a little too warm at the beach, and you got to run into the waves. How do you capture that kind of movement?

Nat Ward: Oh, my goodness. One, you have to make the place a part of your life. I'm currently a little sunburned.

[laughter]

Tiffany Hanssen: I wasn't going to say it.

Nat Ward: Yes, I know. Seriously, I was there day in and day out, and people knew that I was the photographer guy. It wasn't a surprise to people. I would have conversations, "What are you doing here?" We'd talk about it, and then maybe they'd want to be photographed. There's actually a picture in the book that I think it's one of the signal photographs. It comes at a peak of drama in the sequence of the book of a girl getting chased by young men who are throwing water on her. It's the only photograph where I employed the pan. Everything but the girl is blurry. There are all sorts of ways like that in photography to generate the mimicked feeling of that moment in life.

Tiffany Hanssen: Let's get back to our calls. Here we have Lisa from Oradell. Hi, Lisa.

Lisa: Hi. How are you?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good, thank you.

Lisa: Thank you for this program because you really gave me such wonderful memories. My parents were going out to Montauk in the late '50s, and back then, the only thing that was there was fishing. My dad was very into fishing. We would miss the first week of school. Every year, we would go for two weeks, we would miss the first week, and we just had the most glorious time. One of my most fond memories is when we would get there, and we would be driving on the Montauk highway. We would go towards the dock area, and we would go every single afternoon when the boats were coming in, and we would watch all the fish being unloaded off the boats.

We would see sharks, which was really incredible. There was a fisherman, Frank Mundus, and that's loosely what Clint from Jaws is based on.

Speaker 1: No, it's Quint.

Lisa: Quint. Excuse me, everyone's getting involved here. Anyway, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful memories. Just so much fun.

Tiffany Hanssen: We love the memories, Lisa, even if they come from the peanut gallery. Appreciate that. One of the photographs that I really love in the book is there's a bare-chested man. He looks like he's been out in the sun for a very, very, very, very long time. In other words, it's clear that he's very darkened from the effects of the sun. It got me thinking about that use of light and dark in black and white film and in black and white photographs.

Nat Ward: Sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: Obviously, it was a conscious decision to take that photo, but was it based on that kind of light and dark, or was it that you just really like this guy, or what? I just wanted to know the story and get a little bit of the insight into how you decide to snap that picture.

Nat Ward: Paul and I did talk every single day that I was out there, but also, I was really interested in these beach archetypes. He functions in that photograph as an amazing character.

Tiffany Hanssen: He looks like he's the mayor of the beach.

Nat Ward: Exactly. You would imagine that every beach of that density has that kind of character on it. I was thinking, the stuff about light and shadow and composition, that exists in my subconscious movement with the camera. When I'm looking out at the beach and seeing people, oftentimes I'm thinking archetypes from my experience of the beach, from art history, you name it. That's the fun revelation of the beach, the surprises that happen, it's like, "Oh, you fit perfectly into this idea that I have of someone who exists on the beach."

With him and with other people, he was game to play the role. I could say, "Oh, okay, can you sit back and close your eyes and pretend-- puff your chest out a little bit." We could have fun with playing those characters.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking with Nat Ward about his new book of photography called Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954. We're taking your memories as well. We have Mary Ellen, who is in Clearwater, Florida. Hi, Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen: Hey, there. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Nat, congratulations on the book.

Nat Ward: Thank you.

Mary Ellen: My husband and I moved here to Florida, you're welcome, for a variety of reasons that make sense on paper, but we are longtime New Yorkers. I grew up, not grew up, but in college, which I was in the Bronx. Started going out to Montauk in the 1980s. Then my husband and I were lucky enough to buy a small place up at Montauk Manor in 2002. We've owned places since then. We owned a little beach cottage off Tuthill Road, which was just the most magical place. Then we ended up owning at the Beachcomber, which is a co op on old Montauk highway, and we still own there.

Even though we knew we were leaving New York, we could not leave Montauk, and so we held onto that place. We are up there every year. The thing I wanted to bring to the conversation is just there have obviously been so many changes to the whole vibe of Montauk over the years. You're a relative newcomer of 2018.

Nat Ward: Totally.

Mary Ellen: The vibe had already changed a whole lot by the time you discovered Montauk. What I wanted to just bring to the conversation is from God, now it's crazy to think that I've been going out there since the '80s. What is that? Like 40 years? No, can't be. Anyway, as much as people like to hate on it in some ways now, because the vibe has become much more Hamptonized and it's really pricey and people are wearing high heels and their heels are falling into the sand and into the grass and they look silly. They basically are trying to replicate the city and Montauk. All those complaints. It still is one of the most magical places in the world, as you know.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you. Mary Ellen, sorry to cut you off, but we're running out of time here. I just wanted to get your reaction here, Nat, because the vibe has changed. We've just essentially spent the last 35 minutes as a travel log for people who would like to go out to Montauk.

Nat Ward: For sure.

Tiffany Hanssen: We've also spent this time talking about photographs, which, as I understand on the radio, is a little hard sometimes for people to understand. Now we've convinced everyone to drive out to Montauk. There are some photos on display out there, and those are on display through?

Nat Ward: Through the 1st of September at the Second House Museum, which is right off 27 as you come into Montauk. I just wanted to say, in terms of the vibe changing, what's interesting about Montauk is that it layers. The people who are still there are still there. Then yes, there are people losing their heels in the sand, but it layers on top. I think that's a really special sedimentary thing that happens there.

Tiffany Hanssen: That is Nat Ward. He's the photographer who has this new book out called Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954. Nat, thanks for your time.

Nat Ward: Thanks so much.