The Sun Bathers by Kim Llerena

Issue 177

This work is a quiet contemplation on a particular chapter in time, one largely defined by our ties to the world outside. For two years, our lives became more isolated, more domestic, and more interior. Since we’ve emerged, changes to weather, temperature, and tides are more undeniable than ever. One could argue that we are adrift between two uncomfortable realities – that we’re in the calm both before and after a storm.

In obscured portraits and tight crops, these images foreground gesture as an expression of their subjects’ renewed but mutable relationship to place. Private moments play out in public spaces against a recurring backdrop of sea and sunlight. Implications of water are loosely threaded throughout, the subjects hovering always at its edge. Bodies interweave with fragments of these environments, suggesting that our connections to the natural world are at once abundant, entangled, and precarious.

Kim Llerena (she/her) lives and works in Miami, Florida, USA.
kimllerena.com | @kim.llerena