Lifeguard on Duty

“To most of us beach bums, lifeguards look like vaunted kings in their wooden castles, lording over both our safety in the waves and our red-shorted nap-time fantasies. But to photographer Matt Albiani, they’re art.”—The Out TravelerMatt Albiani built his reputation shooting celebrity portraits and fashion spreads for the likes of Elle and Vanity Fair . For his first book, however, he trained his lens on a different class of beautiful people, one more rugged, less glamorous, and yet unassailably the American lifeguard. A lifeguard himself in college, Albiani returned to the beaches of the U.S. to wax visual poetic on the golden summer days of his youth. Lifeguard on Duty collects the results of his years of travel across the country, from Oahu, Hawaii to Nantucket, Massachusetts, capturing these brave men in all their strength and solitude. With expressive framing and subtle composition, Albiani creates a unique and elegant portrait of the life of a guard.