Freckles and the Atlantic

Freckles do something to me I can’t entirely explain and stopped trying to. So when the March 2019 Playboy arrived and I saw Kamila Joanna on Fuerteventura with her surfboard and her freckles and the Atlantic doing its dramatic thing behind her, I was finished. Twenty-nine years old, Berlin-based, Polish by origin—photographed by Simon Bolz, who also shot the February playmate and clearly has a sense of what light does to skin near water.

She moved from Poland to Berlin with her family eighteen years ago and hasn’t left since, just changed neighborhoods. Currently Lichtenberg, east side. I love the openness here, she told the magazine, that you don’t have to be ashamed of anything, that the doors are open to people from everywhere. She prefers East Berlin over West—the street art, the atmosphere, something harder to name. The kind of answer that makes you believe it.

The Playboy shoot was her first time in front of a professional camera at any level. Usually she’s behind it, which tracks: there’s a lack of performance in the images that you notice precisely because it’s unusual for this kind of spread. She works as a project manager in her day life and surfs as seriously as her schedule allows. She wants to see New Zealand, Kauai, Hawaii, Australia—the itinerary of someone who actually surfs rather than just owns a board.

On what she needs from a man: not one-night stands. Feeling, passion, familiarity first. When those are in place, she says, adventure follows naturally. And a man who cooks well already has a significant head start.

On that last point I’m genuinely at a disadvantage. My cooking currently peaks at burning pasta and ordering pizza to cover the evidence. But those freckles.