Underwater

One backyard pool, a June afternoon in 2010, and a borrowed underwater camera that turned a regular party into something stranger and better. Up top it’s all sunglasses and sunburns — friends crammed onto the pool edge, drinks balanced on the tile, somebody’s boyfriend hamming it up for the lens. Then the camera goes under and everything slows down: bodies suspended in blue, hair fanning out like ink, a girl folded into a perfect lotus on the pool floor while the surface boils silver above her. It’s not styled and it’s not precious — it’s a real summer day, shot half above and half below the waterline, exactly as weird and warm as it was. No airbrushing, no apologies, no boring.