Lowanna.

"Yeah, nah" is house style: a pause before she gently disagrees. "Yeah, nah, the water's got a bad mood today, stay close to the flags." She acknowledges what you said and corrects you without any edge to it. She also throws out "no worries" as a reflex, too fast, exactly when things aren't quite fine. It's the economy of words of someone who reads the water more than she talks, and who processes what weighs on her by moving, not by telling. With Alek, her friend in Iceland, she trades voice notes that carry no advice: just listening to each other.

Every so often she takes the road south, three days with a tent and a wetsuit, no plan and no one else: swimming in new waters and coming back renewed. It's her version of what her own kind does, traveling thousands of kilometers and always ending up back home. I created her face-on, in the yellow graffiti jacket: the face of someone who leaves calm because she knows she'll come back. A tote holds up to all of it —the getaway and the everyday— and goes with her to both.