The writer and photographer Nat Ward will sign copies of his soon-to-be-released photography book, "Ditch: Montauk, New York, 11954," on Saturday at the Montauk Historical Society's Second House Museum from 3 to 4 p.m.
An exhibition of the same name opened at the museum on May 24 when Second House, which was built in 1797 and holds the distinction of being Montauk's "oldest dwelling," reopened to the public for the first time since 2013 following an extensive restoration by the Town of East Hampton.
A series of striking black-and-white panoramic portraits taken against the backdrop of Ditch Plain Beach over the course of four summers, the project began in 2018, toward the end of Mr. Ward's writing fellowship at the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk: "I had finished up the drafting and revisions that I needed to do, and I still had, I think, two weeks left in the residency," he recalled. "And I just kind of wanted to go to the beach."
An admitted "camera nerd," he took along a "rather strange" medium-format panoramic film camera -- a type typically reserved for high-resolution landscape photography. He made his way along the Shadmoor State Park trail, cut through the sand cliff, and saw Ditch Plain open up to his left as he descended to the beach.
"I immediately turned around from the cliffs, which would be the thing to photograph with that camera. I was enthralled by the crush of people on the sand and the vast array of kinds of people, arrangements of people, arrangements of drama playing out in front of me. And so I started walking up and down the beach, photographing people, talking to people."
Mr. Ward had stumbled upon the "wonderful logic" of the project. Developing the film back at his darkroom in Queens, he saw just how effectively the panoramic format captured the long, wide, and skinny form of Montauk's landscape, and the scenes of beach life he had witnessed there. "You can't actually take in the whole photograph with one glance, the way you can't really take in the beach with one glance," he said. "You have to slow down."
He had cold-emailed Mia Certic of the Montauk Historical Society that first summer, attaching some scans of his prints and offering to donate a full set upon the project's completion. "This is something that will describe to people in the future what this place looked like at a particular moment in time," he said, and the release of his book just happened to coincide with the long-awaited reopening of Second House.
"The project is so much about the particular and very special kind of community that assembles on the beach," he said, "and it just feels like the pictures are coming home to the people I made them for."
The exhibition is open from Thursday to Sunday between 12 and 5 p.m., and will run through Sept. 1.
