Julen Torres: the Basque guy who strips everything off on the beach and lets you watch

You’re walking on a wild beach at the end of the day. The sand is cold, the sky is gray, driftwood piled up forms strange shapes. And there, between the salt-bleached logs, a dark-haired guy in black underwear looks at you in profile. Then he takes them off. This is exactly the vibe of this series by David Ortube, with the very seductive Julen Torres as the only hot element in the landscape.

Julen is the kind of guy who doesn’t make noise but you spot him immediately. Dark-haired with short hair, trimmed beard, angular face with a cameo profile — the guy’s got looks. His body is toned without being overworked: well-cut shoulders, a lightly hairy chest you want to feel against you, a flat stomach that goes down to a natural bush, and solid thighs planted in the sand. He radiates that quiet masculinity of guys who have nothing to prove. He walks naked in the dunes with his arms open, like a guy who just let everything go — work, clothes, conventions — and is finally breathing.

And then there’s this photo. The one where Julen is lying face down in the sand, completely naked, with pebbles placed along his spine. His beautiful ass is there, round and firm, offered to the low light and the blurred sea behind him. It’s the kind of image that stops you in your tracks. The kind of image that makes you zoom in, come back to it, keep it. His whole muscled back is outlined in the film grain, his shoulder blades, the curve of his lower back, the perfect roundness of his muscled butt. It’s carnal and contemplative at the same time — like a fantasy taking its time.

David Ortube is a graphic designer and photographer based in Donostia-San Sebastián, in the Spanish Basque Country. He shoots exclusively on film and his male portraits are published in magazines like PNPPL zine. His approach is organic, minimal: no retouching, no artifice, just a model, a landscape and natural light. The silver gelatin black and white does the rest — it gives Julen’s skin that living, almost tactile texture that’s sorely missing from polished digital photos. The dunes, the driftwood, the misty horizon: everything recalls a Spanish arthouse film where the hero would end up naked by the water at some point.

Find Julen on Instagram.

Photos: David Ortube