Blue Water, Wrong Hemisphere

Came across photographs of the Australian coast by Janneke Storm, a photographer who shoots weddings for work and makes images like this on her own time. Just light and a model named Sophie in water that’s too blue to be real. The kind of image that makes you feel the salt and understand why people leave.

I’ve been looking at them for days. There’s something about good photography where it stops being representation and becomes necessity—not aspiration so much as longing. They’re not doing anything complicated. They’re just true in a way that gets past you.

Spring here is wet and allergic and miserable. Looking at images of Australian water makes it very easy to imagine leaving—actually leaving, not someday. Buying the ticket, getting on the plane. I know it won’t fix anything, but that’s what these photographs do. They make you believe for a moment that it might.