A Summer of Warmth, Freedom, and Light
Summer has a way of touching everything with a kind of softness. The light falls slow and golden, wrapping around skin as though time itself has paused. In Erick Monterrosa’s newest body of work, that glow is more than a backdrop — it becomes a living force, shaping the story of models Hazel Hoffman and Rafael Torres as they move through the stillness of a sunlit vineyard. Their laughter mingles with the quiet hum of insects and the distant ring of glass, the music of a queer summer unafraid of being seen.
Monterrosa’s inspiration draws loosely from Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s tender portrayal of young love and self-discovery. Yet where Guadagnino’s vision is hushed and secretive, Monterrosa’s is open and full of air. His subjects do not hide behind shadows or whispered moments; they stand in daylight, at ease in their affection, confident in the truth of being fully visible.
In his images, touch becomes its own kind of language. A brush of fingers says what words cannot, and a shared smile becomes an entire story. Monterrosa’s photography doesn’t dwell in longing — it transforms it. Desire here is not a wound, but a release. What once might have been concealed now lives unguarded under the sun.
The Making of a Summer Story
For Erick Monterrosa, every project begins not with a plan but with a feeling — a flicker of memory, a mood, a faint song echoing in the mind. When he set out to channel the atmosphere of Call Me By Your Name, his goal wasn’t imitation. It was to capture that weightless sense of summer where time bends, rules dissolve, and love feels infinite.
Shot in the countryside, the series reflects the lazy rhythm of late afternoons. Monterrosa directs with a light touch, allowing Hazel and Rafael to move freely, to find their own moments of laughter and closeness. The result is effortless — a visual dialogue between two people exploring touch, comfort, and play without restraint.
Where Guadagnino’s camera lingered in silence, Monterrosa’s lens captures sound — laughter, warmth, breath. His work replaces secrecy with celebration, offering a vision of queer love that thrives in the open, bathed in sunlight rather than hidden behind it.
The vineyard itself becomes a symbol — fertile, generous, alive. Each frame honors connection in its simplest form: the nearness of bodies, the safety of being known, the beauty of joy unguarded.
Hazel and Rafael: Connection in Motion
There is an easy chemistry between Hazel Hoffman and Rafael Torres that cannot be staged. Monterrosa doesn’t force intimacy; he discovers it. Together, Hazel and Rafael move through the vineyard like old friends rediscovering each other — teasing, laughing, pouring wine beneath hanging vines.
Hazel brings a quiet gentleness that balances Rafael’s grounded charm. In one photograph, Hazel leans across a wooden table, golden light resting on his skin, while Rafael smiles, pouring wine with a tenderness that needs no explanation. The images are sensual, but not explicit — emotion leads, not exposure. Monterrosa’s vision reminds us that true eroticism is rooted in comfort and authenticity, not performance.
Their connection feels real because it is built on trust. The gestures between them — playful, unrehearsed — echo the freedom that defines queer love at its most honest. There are no roles, no boundaries, only presence. In Monterrosa’s world, intimacy isn’t an act. It’s a conversation, and both of them speak it fluently.
Monterrosa’s Artistic Vision
Erick Monterrosa’s art exists in the space between contrasts: light and shadow, faith and freedom, vulnerability and strength. His work often feels both sacred and human, capturing beauty without losing sincerity.
“I’m full of contradictions,” he has said. “I get bored easily, so I never stay in one style. I embrace it all — the classic, the experimental, the queer.”
That philosophy pulses through this series. While it nods to Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, it also carries Monterrosa’s unmistakable signature — a fusion of fine art, fashion, and homoerotic energy. The result is cinematic but intimate, soft yet deliberate.
Born in El Salvador, raised in Nicaragua, and now based in Spain, Monterrosa’s multicultural upbringing informs how he sees and photographs men. His past, marked by religious tradition, once framed desire as something forbidden. Through photography, he reclaims it. “I grew up deeply religious,” he’s said. “As a teenager, I explored my sexuality secretly through images. Now I create what was once forbidden to me.”
That act of reclamation defines his work. Monterrosa isn’t chasing shock value; he’s after truth. “Some of my images are erotic,” he explains, “but emotion always comes first.” His art examines what lives beneath the surface — not just the body, but the feeling beneath the skin.
In this series, that honesty glows through every image. Monterrosa captures not only what love looks like, but what freedom feels like.
Rethinking Queer Nostalgia
For many queer people, nostalgia carries both sweetness and ache — memories of love discovered and lost, of moments lived quietly. Call Me By Your Name captured that feeling, the bittersweet tenderness of love that cannot last. Monterrosa’s interpretation shifts the mood. His nostalgia is not for what was lost, but for what has finally been claimed.
His photographs do not mourn the love that never was; they celebrate the love that finally is. Hazel and Rafael’s connection feels like both memory and promise — a reclaiming of space, of joy, of presence. It’s queer desire without shame, queer affection without secrecy.
“I see my work as a blend of art, fashion, and male sensuality,” Monterrosa has said. “I try to merge all three into one consistent vision.” The harmony of those worlds gives this series its strength. It is sensual, but never forced; emotional, but never sentimental. The tenderness and the freedom exist side by side.
Here, nostalgia becomes creation — a rewriting of the queer past into something whole. In Monterrosa’s hands, remembrance is not sorrow, but healing.
A Celebration of Joy
At its core, this series isn’t about heartbreak or loss. It’s about joy — radiant, ordinary, human joy. The kind that glows from skin warmed by sunlight, from laughter shared between friends, from being seen exactly as you are. Monterrosa’s art has always balanced fashion and feeling, but this time there is a softness, a quiet peace. Queerness is not coded or concealed here — it is natural, woven into the world itself.
He once said, “I’ve learned through photography that there’s nothing wrong with celebrating our bodies while we have them.” That spirit infuses every image: the play of light, the folds of linen, the laughter caught mid-breath.
In a time when queer expression is often debated or constrained, Monterrosa’s work offers something radical in its simplicity — happiness. Not defiant, not tragic, but calm and real. Sometimes freedom looks like sunlight between two people who finally stop hiding.
The vineyard, in the end, is not just scenery. It is metaphor — a place where life grows wild and love bears fruit without fear.
The Power of Being Seen
Visibility has always been central to Monterrosa’s work — not the kind that seeks permission, but the kind that simply exists. In this series, queerness is not a subject to explain; it is a fact of life, integrated with the light, the laughter, and the landscape.
His photographs don’t aim for perfection; they reach for truth. A grin, a glance, a hand resting on another — all become poetry through his lens. Each image feels like a quiet declaration: that to be seen, in your wholeness and your joy, is enough.
Art, for Monterrosa, is a form of liberation. These images remind us that queer stories don’t always end in heartbreak or secrecy. Sometimes they end in sunlight, in laughter, in the small, sacred act of being alive.
And when the light fades, what lingers is warmth — proof that the most powerful kind of beauty is the one that has always been there, waiting to be seen.
