2020 was predestined to be “unique”. As a leap year and the dawn of a new decade, a double that occurs rarely in any lifetime, 2020 promised a new beginning, opportunities to achieve lofty goals, and the sense of wonder and adventure that comes with turning the calendar to a new year. 2020 was, however, quickly hijacked in January by a global pandemic that by March caused the world to take drastic defensive actions not experienced in five generations.
The global humanitarian and economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic have been far-reaching and devastating. At home in the USA, mind numbing rates of death and critical hospitalizations play out on news reports each day measuring both the tenacity of the disease terrorizing “Main Street USA”, as well as plotting its “grand tour” across the country and the globe.
Mass cancellations of sporting, cultural and social events, and closure of schools, non-essential businesses and travel opportunities have assaulted the established tempo of everyday life. Realization of our vulnerability spread with the disease: our nation faced an adversary that wasn’t daunted by the might of our armed forces. The disbelief that this was occurring in our neighborhoods only stoked misguided defiance and political discord that fueled the progress of the disease.
COVID-19 was not the only pandemic of the time: the centuries-long pandemic of racial injustice and police brutality were laid bare through the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States. The circumstances of their deaths were amplified through social media, uniting people across the globe of all colors and backgrounds under the standard refrain Black Lives Matter as applied to their own circumstances demanding change.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” As we approached the summer months bookended by Memorial Day and Labor Day the nation was desperately in need of light.
In a summer of such darkness, this book highlights the efforts of a little surf and fishing town that came together to save lives and unite for a better future. Montauk, New York lies at the very tip of Long Island New York, a highly populated island which forms a protective barrier for mainland New York state from the Atlantic ocean. Montauk is fondly referred to as The End, a slogan often emblazoned on T-Shirts and sweatpants adorning tourist shops on main street. While included in the colloquial geographic reference of The Hamptons, a summer playground for the New York elite and social A lists from around the world, Montauk boasts some of the best beaches and surfing in America. Montauk though, at its core, is a working town.
Home to one of the largest commercial fishing fleets on the east coast, there is resilience permeating the locals of this small coastal town that has survived the extremes of hurricanes and economic downturns alike over the years, and realism that comes from enduring its share of lives lost at sea.
Surf Montauk is a book that explores Montauk's surfing community through pictures and interviews with the locals providing a glimpse of real life during the summer of 2020. Neither immune from COVID-19, nor insensitive to the Black Lives Matter movement, Surf Montauk highlights the unique outlook of the surfing locals and seeks to draw on the lessons and wisdom they take from their daily interactions with surf that help them deal with challenges in other aspects of their lives. The subtext in these photographs is the almost religious devotion to the surfing pastime, the reverence and awe for the ocean, and the sense of internal balance that comes from being in unity with nature.
Surf Montauk provides six interviews with characters indiscernible in their bathers, board shorts, wetsuits, vans and trucks from those typical stereotypes often associated with the free living, break chasing, surfer stereotypes that we all know. Those images though belie the interviewees’ role as thought leaders and people of influence in our community. Surf Montauk probes through pictures and verses what they individually take from their daily surfing rituals that can provide guidance for all of us as we come to terms with the events of 2020.
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