This paper considers the content and form of vernacular photographs of beachgoers from the Nasser era. A striking array of leisure activities and playful poses characterize these photographs, most of which are held at the Akkasah Collection at NYU Abu Dhabi. This paper considers how these images reflect the creation of new social spaces, as well as push at the boundaries of normative behavior. These photographs represent an underutilized resource for challenging early and mid-century attempts to codify social water spaces. A broader methodological aim of this paper is to integrate vernacular photography into a spatial analysis of water leisure. Waterfronts, piers, and canals were frequent sites of social transgression, beaches were considered in popular discourse, such as magazines, as a proper alternative. These photographs provide evidence of sustained, casual and playful social interaction that disrupts an appositional definition of the beach. Indeed, as literature and film also attest, the beachfront was a liminal and flirtatious space. The water’s edge in this sense acts as a charged and productive space of mid-century self-fashioning.