Swedish photographer Johan Larsson often works with a vintage camera, relishing the rich, tactile quality of black and white film. For this shot, he captures his girlfriend skinny-dipping on a markedly balmy evening in the summer of 2012. Larsson’s portraits offer a glimpse into his own inner world, exploring his most intimate relationships. He rarely photographs people with whom he is not personally acquainted.
Here as in all of his work, Larsson avoids using a flash, allowing for the bright flesh of the woman to illuminate the frame. Disrupting the surface of the dark water, her body seems to travel effortlessly with the rippling waves. We are invited to know her intimately, and yet she appears in black and white as a figure strange and mysterious, eliciting a potent nostalgia for summer days past.
Image © Johan Larsson 2014