“Cycling to the lake. Swimming in the lake. Reading and sleeping and sweating by the lake. Wet hair and skin, in the shadow of trees, and a mix of blurred chatter and rustling leaves. Backgammon and being chased by wasps.”
“The thing I like most about summertime is the empty streets. Especially the streets on the edge of town, the streets no one likes to stroll anyway, no matter what season. In summertime these kind of streets don’t even feel functional anymore, they’re just cleared-out decor. This image is from a scorching summery session with Amsterdam powerhouse Andreas taken a while ago in Berchem, Antwerp, a few blocks from where I live.”
“On an early summer day, Romain, the stylist Jérémie Chegrane, and I took a trip to a lake near Paris. The soft, late-afternoon light bathed the scene as Romain wore a corset adorned with metal pieces that shimmered like fish scales. We found ourselves alone by the water, with the trees gently filtering the sunlight. It was that magical time of year when the days stretch longer, time slows down, and the warmth and enchantment of summer draw near – the most beautiful season of all.”
Photography by Kayla Connors, Styling by Abby Adler
“This image reminds me of the beautifully eccentric nature of the British seaside. It brings out our quirks like no other place. And no, believe it or not, this photo wasn’t set up.”
All summer the sound of the sea, Splashing my bare feet in the edge of the summer ripples, Summer rivulets by the road-sides, The reflection of the summer sky in the water— Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
–Summer by Walt Whitman
Untitled, from Down Tower RoadPhotography by Camille Lemoine
“The heather bloomed early this year, and was a welcome change in season. I returned to this hillside to watch its arrival, and to pick my first blaeberry of the year.”
“Photography has always taken me travelling, but especially in the summer. Even if it’s running around the streets of Paris until late at night and forgetting the time, then taking the metro all sweaty back home. It’s falling into conversation with strangers everywhere, meeting old and new friends, hanging in parks or by canals. Sudden travels to the south, falling asleep outside, swimming at night. There’s a lot of joy.
“It’s crushes, romances. It’s taking pictures of beds in new rooms. It’s the joy of what awaits the next day. It’s spending the whole summer in a van, waking up with the sunset from the window or someone hammering on your door to move your car. It’s feeling warmth, comfortable and protected, when you’re in someone’s arms again, after spending hours outside in the sun.”
“The summer heat is scorching, the sun’s intensity is like the passion of first love. We play beneath the sunlight like children, only to emerge covered in the marks of its relentless glare.”
“Summer makes me think of fruit. I can see my mum’s garden. I can feel seeds in my hand, pushing them into the soil. Summer makes me think optimistically – to believe in a future – as does planting seeds. A seed is alive and can breathe, it holds life like a shell. Summer makes me think of sea shells. Shells and shells and shells.”
“I’m not good at doing anything in small doses, let alone writing about summer, a season which shocks me so violently that by the time I am finished reeling from my existential smack in the face, it’s nearly over. So instead I will quote Pulp’s David’s Last Summer, the lyrics of which I have stuck up on my studio wall.
“This is where you want to be, there’s nothing else but you and her, and how you use your time. The room smells faintly of sun tan lotion in the evening sunlight and when you take off your clothes, you’re still wearing a small pale skin bikini. The sound of children playing in the park comes from far away, and time slows down to the speed of the specks of dust floating in the light from the window.”
“Every summer I would make a new playlist for myself. This summer’s playlist includes Beltway by Solange, Seabird by Innovations and Chimney 烟突 by mitsume.”
“This is a picture I made of my younger kid at Henry Cowell Redwood State Park outside of Santa Cruz, CA. It was a place I used to go a lot as a teenager. This was the first time I had been back in a decade, or brought my family there as an adult. Rafa immediately picked up two thin branches and started on this shadow ritual, using them (inadvertently) as divining rods, which are said to cross when they meet groundwater. There is something about this picture – the young child and ancient tree, the blurry texture of the bark and the sharpness of the shadow, the ceremony being performed as a child’s dance – that startled and moved me.”
“Summer is the time when glowing sweat is dripping off of our skin, while the water evaporates from the grass and makes the morning fresh with the first light from the sunrise. Lying under the sky filled with stars with your loved ones and being silent is just as comfortable as arguing on the beach, wrestling out and laughing about it a second later.”
Sink with Roses, VirginiaPhotography by Lorena Lohr
“On hot nights you stay out later and more of anything can be revealed. Here are some roses found in the heat of a summer evening in a small town in South Virginia.”
“Summers smell like salt and sunscreen, taste like ripe tomatoes, sound like cicadas and waves crashing. It feels like the sun on your skin, and looks like endless days and shooting stars on August 11.”
Oakleyville Wreath, 2018 (from To Die Alive)Photography by Matthew Leifheit
“In the summer of 2018, the ocean at Fire Island spat this funeral wreath onto the beach at my feet. I carried it home and photographed it while it was still wet.”
“To put it simply, this photo, taken this summer reminds me of the subconscious way I adapt to the people that surround me in my life, whether its the way I talk, laugh, act, or the things I can be interested in.”