Emilia Coeur Has a Pool

Angela turned eighteen this year and lives in Viersen, a town somewhere in the flat western reaches of North Rhine-Westphalia. When she isn’t being ground down by teachers or quietly poisoning wealthy old women at the luxury perfumery where she works, she’s drinking tequila and staying out until it gets light—which takes longer than you’d expect, because she has an unreasonable tolerance for the stuff. She’s made herself a promise to be rich and famous before long. A porn career is an option she hasn’t ruled out, but she’d prefer art.

Under the name Emilia Coeur she photographs people, and occasionally lets herself be photographed—like the pool shots, which is how I found her work. There’s something unhurried about them: a body moving through water at night, no urgency to make a point, the surface doing most of the work. She also writes, in the scattered way you’d expect from someone still getting through a school week. The ambition is visible anyway. You can feel it in how she holds the camera.