General

Sensuous, seductive and unbearably sexy in its effect, The End celebrates the beauty of a group of young "all-natural" surfers in a small obscure fishing village.

Visually stunning and lavishly illustrated with duotone and color plates. "The End", is one of the sexiest photography books ever published.

While visiting New York last September, I had the chance to see the exhibit at Sothebys and advance ordered a copy of the book, which was slated for a December release. Now, eight months later, the book finally arrived and I can say without hesitation that it was well worth the wait.
The End is a special work, a nostalgic chronicle of a unique and truly American place, a daring and effective foray into the relatively uncharted waters of narrative photography, and a beautiful book full of beautiful people.
Dweck has masterfully photographed young people in the most natural and unaffected ways. Here, he manages to capture the innocence and provocativity of each of his subjects without seeming exploitative. The End is destined to become one of the most sought after, if not the most referenced, photographic essays.

Michael Dweck's The End is a successful first book. In it, the photographer tells, visually, of his love for Montauk - the most remote point of Long Island. Indeed, The End is far more closely akin to a graphical love ode to Montauk than to a piece of photojournalism; absent is the comprehensiveness one would associate with an exhaustive look at Montauk and in its place is repeated harping on what makes Montauk - in the author's words - like an edenic "lost world."

Throughout The End, pictures of Montauk - its personalities (mostly surfers) as well as its natural features (mostly beaches) - are juxtaposed with pictures of beautiful people, often against a background of Montauk, but quite frequently indoors; witness, for example, "Julian checking out the sets, 6 A.M., Ditch Plains," which faces a posed picture of "Lilla, Napeague." This practice is quite striking - initially it seems disorienting and out of place - but it ultimately proves an effective way of conveying the sexually-charged beauty that Dweck clearly finds evident in Montauk.

Dweck's photography is effective and moving, with frequent flashes of brilliance. At its best, The End evokes Toni Frissell and particularly Martin Munkacsi. Its most successful posed pictures - including "Sonya getting changed in Gilles's truck, Trailer Park," "Lilla Napeague" (the fourth and fifth of the five pictures with that title), "Neva, Poles" (2), and the final "Shannon, Shadmoor Cliffs" - reach Peter Lindbergh-like heights in their effective portrayals of vulnerable feminine beauty.

Perhaps the most striking feature of The End is its narrative flow, which is remarkably both coherent and subtle. The book begins with several sequential historical photographs of Montauk, and moves on to illustrate a sort of "day in the life of a town," beginning with a drive to the beach - "David and Pam in their Caddy, Trailer Park" - moving on to the parking lot with perhaps the novel's most successful pair of photographs - "Sonya getting changed in Gilles's truck, Ditch Plains," and "Gilles at the parking lot, Ditch Plains" - then to the beach at dawn ("Julian checking out the sets, 6 A.M., Ditch Plains") then midday, with an extensive series of surfing pictures. The narrative, as it is, moves indoors with several sexually-charged photographs and the book ends after some brilliant evening shots (notably the spectacular "Bonfire, Trailer Park" series). Indeed, it is obvious that much care was given to The End's sequencing; even within the narrative, there are numerous visual games being played, from a figure in "Lifeguards, 1997" glancing across the page at the nude Lilla in "Lilla, Napeague" (5) to the pairing of the genuine American iconographic "Postcard I found at Joni's" with the nostalgic "Lilla, Napeague" (3).

These two themes - "watching" and iconography - recur throughout The End, a book which is seemingly obsessed with voyeurism (a perhaps unsurprising obsession for a photographer) and whose frequently-iconic images seem ready-made to implant themselves on the American conscience (with any justice, "Sonya getting changed in Gilles's truck, Ditch Plains," "Noel at Bettina's House, Turtle Cove," and "Beach dog, Ditch Plains" will find their way onto postcards everywhere and into the photographic canon).

Finally, it must be said that The End the book is a spectacular object. The photographs are printed vividly on a paper stock that is of supreme quality, the book itself is beautiful, from its cover to its binding, and it is indeed an actual pleasure to hold.