Dan's Papers - July 11, 2008

New York photographer and artist Michael Dweck spends his free weekends and summers on the East End, enjoying the relaxing pleasures of Montauk's sun, sand and surf. On the recent holiday weekend with its less than perfect weather, Dweck spent the day on the beach, indulging in the tranquility he has enjoyed since childhood.

Discussing his past and the start of a successful professional career, Dweck was full of passion and life as he reminisced about fishing trips with his father and weekend trips with his girlfriend to Montauk, which is where he first became enthralled with water. Intrigued by the blurred shapes of fish as they darted beneath the water, Dweck started taking photographs out on Jones Beach in the late '70s, following the small beach and surf culture that blossomed there.

Michael's last book, Montauk: The End is a narrative journey of a typical day for a Montauk surfer. For that compilation, he chose to shoot many of his subjects in the nude. "Rather than creating a factual, National Geographic-style documentary, to me these photos represent what the surf culture in Montauk is like - it's a very hedonistic, surreal sub-culture."

His latest work, Mermaids, is much more abstract than The End. The book originally came to fruition because Dweck wanted to do a project focused around water, playing with different lights and lenses. He began by shooting stills in the bays around the East End, including shots taken on Lake Montauk late at night. As winter set in, he chose to relocate to the warmth of Florida, where he had his first encounter with the girls of Aripeka Island, who served as the ultimate inspiration for Mermaids.

Unlike The End, Mermaids is not a narrative. Each picture tends to be independent of the others. Through his manipulation of light and water, Dweck has created a series of images that are both sensually captivating and somewhat grotesque and horrifying. The opening image of a figure seemingly suspended in black nothingness, her body frozen and preserved in a contorted state. Citing influences, Dweck immediately refers to painters of the impressionist movement, whose work was famous for its emphasis on light and its changing qualities. Dweck's professional respect for the works by Matisse, Bacon and Dali are evident in the surreal, fluid elements of his own work.

Throughout the well-formed Mermaids, photos elegantly contrast themselves, from the overtly crisp and sharp images to the much more distorted and abstract. "Mermaids is about escapism," said Dweck. "These girls, who feel so much more comfortable under the water than on land, are able to escape all the crap that is going on in society at the moment."

Dweck spent several weeks getting to know his subjects, the "water-babies" of Aripeka Island, before beginning to compile photographs over a year-and-a-half period, ensuring that the finished result was a testimony to the grace and natural ability of the models. Daughters of fishermen, these women spent much of their lives in the water, finding themselves very much at home below the waves, so much so that they can hold their breath for up to six minutes.

Dweck is in awe of these unique people, and said it was difficult to capture the essence of their culture through photography. For some of the shots, he moved freely with an underwater camera, while at other times he confined himself to a submerged fish tank, suspending a very powerful flood light from a crane, 50 feet above the water. "Because the light I used only had a meter-wide spot on it, I only had seconds at a time to capture the girls as they passed in front of my vision, especially as the currents in which they were moving could carry them at speeds reaching 15 knots." While the choice of shooting at night limited his options, the most important element for him was to capture his subjects at their most comfortable - playing and dancing in a world that many of us will never get a chance to explore.

Mermaids is currently being exhibited in the Staley-Wise Gallery in New York, and will soon go on tour, first to Hamburg in September, and then to Japan at Christmas. The book is an exclusive, limited-edition project, sold only in select galleries in Paris, Japan, London and Rio de Janeiro, and in bookstores that Dweck feels a personal connection with, or have supported his dreams and creativity in the past. There are only 2,000 copies printed, some of which can be found in local bookstores including BookHampton, East End Books and Barnacle Books. In addition, 100 autographed copies are being sold in conjunction with a signed print.

Professing that he "never stops working," Dweck already has two new projects in the pipeline. The first is a pseudo-documentary-style movie about the mermaids, in which he hopes to better portray their nature and unique abilities. Despite his friendly, outgoing nature, Dweck was more enigmatic about the second piece - an 11-part graphic novel, to be produced in Los Angeles