Marcel Winatschek

The Shark Float

Brad was bored, which in LA means you’re sitting by your pool wishing something would happen. So he called Sara Cummings. He wanted to celebrate summer, he said, but not just with nakedness—he needed a story to go with it.

He came up with the shark. Not a real one, just the inflatable kind. But Brad talked about it like he’d figured something out. The shark swims toward her. Sara ignores it at first, then rides it. Then she’s tired of it and lies on the plastic grass with her camera. That was the story.

What got me was how seriously he took it, how he’d made something real from a pool float. The photos went to Purple. I don’t know if that was always the plan or just what happens when you decide boredom is a problem worth solving with whatever’s at hand.