This Summertime photo book by Joanne Dugan is super lush, and the perfect visual accompaniment to THIS AWESOME HEATWAVE we’re having right now. [In Europe that is, if you’re reading this in California or Oz, your life is one big heatwave but hopefully you’ll still enjoy it!]

It also contains the awesome sentence: “We define our summers by the water we sit by.” We were lucky enough to chat to the photographer Joanne Dugan who put the book together (her images also feature within it, including the shot above) about the creative process and why we all heart summer so much. And she was kind enough to let us reproduce some of her favourite shots from Summertime over the next few pages.

Break out the Soltan and enjoy, while the living is easy!

Tell us about yourself, what were you like as a child?

From an early age, I liked to look at things closely. My earliest memory is of watching the slowly-moving reflection of my younger sister while she crawled, reflected in the rounded surface of a bright red glass Christmas ornament hanging from our holiday tree. Much of what I remember is about shape and colour and movement, rather than specific experiences. I also learned to love the water at a very early age, and found myself lingering in it often, whether in the ocean, a swimming pool or even the bathtub.