ART
Q&A: THE IDEALIZED & HEROIC VISIONS OF MICHAEL DWECK THE RENOWNED PHOTOGRAPHER DISCUSSES THE END: MONTAUK N.Y. AND FILMING HIS FIRST DOCUMENTARY By Lizabeth Zindel
“I saw what I guess you could call old Montauk — or my old Montauk, because I suppose everyone has their own version of a place,” the visual artist Michael Dweck told me as we sat on a white couch at his photography studio in the West Village. “I saw the beaches, the girls, and the surfers on Ditch Plains. Romance. Fraternity. Some kind of paradisiacal enclave.” Dweck was describing his idealized view of the beachside community he captured in his book The End: Montauk, N.Y.
In early 2000s, Dweck rented a house on 29 Reuter Place, near Ditch Plains, and began taking photographs of the local surfers. He wanted to capture the raw and mythic landscape before it was changed forever by commercialization. The eye-catching tome was published in 2004 with five thousand copies, and that first edition sold out in three weeks. It was later revised and re-released in second and third editions, and has become a collector’s item (some copies selling on Social Life