December in Someone Else’s Summer

German winter is a war of attrition. The days collapse before they properly begin, the cold is never dramatic enough to be interesting, and it runs from November deep into March without apology. Everyone around you is either grimly resigned to it or aggressively cheerful about thick blankets and hot cocoa, and both responses are equally exhausting. What I want is heat—the specific satisfaction of noon sun doing actual work on skin, nothing between you and it but a T-shirt or nothing at all, the kind of warmth that makes the idea of going inside feel like a minor defeat.

Meanwhile, Australia is in the middle of summer. Blue sky, surf, white sand—the unhurried quality of hot afternoons that seem to have no obligation to end. Photographer James Geers is shooting it all from down there, and the main subject of his bright, saturated work is Emily Lacometti—topless at the waterline, easy and unselfconscious in the way people only manage when they’re genuinely comfortable in their bodies and don’t particularly care whether you’re watching.

The photographs are exactly what a German December needs and cannot have. I look at them, feel briefly warm, remember where I am, and count the months until the cold finally lets go.