Playa del Amor: A Nudist Beach, a Wild Ocean and a Man Called Charles
The Beach of Love and the Man with a Ukulele
by New York City Queer Event Photographer koitz
If you ever find yourself in Zipolite, on Mexico's Pacific coast, there is one place you cannot miss: Playa del Amor, the Beach of Love. Zipolite is home to Mexico's only officially recognized nude beach, and Playa del Amor is where much of the LGBTQ+ crowd tends to gather. As with many places worth discovering, getting there is not quite as straightforward as you might expect. You walk all the way to the far end of the beach, climb a hill, and, once you reach the top, you see it. There it is, waiting for you on the other side.
I have to admit, it was smaller than I had imagined. A little less impressive, perhaps, than the picture I had built in my head. But appearances can be deceiving. Once you make your way down and spend some time there, you begin to realize that its simplicity is anything but ordinary. The beach itself is small, but the rocks are big and beautiful. The ocean is rough, wild and potentially dangerous. It has that untamed quality that makes you admire it while keeping a healthy distance. And then there are the men.
Young and older, beautiful and ordinary, all sorts of bodies and personalities. Most of them naked, of course. They seem almost oblivious to what is happening around them, yet somehow perfectly conscious of their surroundings. There is a peculiar combination of freedom and self-awareness in the way they inhabit this little stretch of sand.
There are only two small bars, the kind they would call chiringuitos on the Spanish coast. Nothing fancy. Just a beer, a chair, and a front-row seat to watch the crazy ocean and the wonderfully unpredictable men who seem to belong to it. And then, among all those guys (and a couple of girls), I spotted him. He was hard to miss!
A naked man dancing like crazy while playing his ukulele. He seemed to be completely in his own world, enjoying himself without the slightest concern for what anyone else might think. Someone told me he was always there. Naturally, I wanted to photograph him.
I approached and asked whether he would mind if I took a few pictures. He was more than happy to oblige. In fact, he seemed genuinely pleased that I had asked. “A lot of people just take my picture without even asking,” he told me. “Oh, I would never do that,” I replied, almost apologizing on behalf of all those people who had photographed him without bothering to ask for his permission.
And so we began. He danced, played his ukulele and performed for my camera. He was having fun, and so was I. There was something wonderfully spontaneous about the whole encounter. At some point, perhaps when he had had enough of dancing, he started walking towards me. I kept taking pictures as he approached, camera still in my hands. He eventually sat down right in front of me, on the sand, and looked straight at me.I took one last photograph. And somehow, I knew that was the one.
It wasn't necessarily the most spectacular pose or the most technically perfect picture. But it was the photograph that, to me, captured something essential about him. His personality, his presence, his way of being in the world. His soul, if you like. So here it is.
His name is Charles. He told me he was born and raised in New York City. He seemed genuinely happy to be in Zipolite, enjoying the beach, the ocean, the people and, presumably, the freedom of being exactly who he wanted to be.
And I was happy, too. Happy to have met him, happy that he had trusted me with his image, and happy to have captured a moment that felt so beautifully uncontrived. Because sometimes photography is not really about finding the perfect location, the perfect light or the perfect composition. Sometimes it is simply about being in the right place, approaching someone with respect, and allowing a moment to unfold.
That afternoon, in a little beach somewhere along the Mexican Pacific, I met a naked man with a ukulele, a big smile and a story that began in New York. And I got a photograph that, for me, says much more than a thousand words ever could. Beautiful. Authentic. Genuine. Just like Charles.