Pools Lounging, Diving, Floating, Dreaming: Picturing Life at the Swimming Pool

A celebratory ode to the joy and enduring allure of the swimming pool, and a gorgeous photography book to accompany poolside daydreaming.

Glamorous, seductive, and fun, made for lounging, frolicking, splashing, dipping, diving, floating, and escaping, swimming pools are symbols of both sport and leisure and conjure images of well-oiled bodies, colorful bikinis, and glimmering blue waters on hot summer days. Muse to writers, artists, photographers, and filmmakers, the swimming pool's careless opulence is splashed across the pages of this book in gorgeous images by contemporary photographers. In her second book for Rizzoli, curator, writer, and avid swimmer Lou Stoppard offers the promise of sunshine and the seduction of youth in her edit of some of the best contemporary swimming-pool photography.

Organized by theme, from the glamour of the poolside party to the simple, meditative pleasure of being in the water, the selected photographs are as inspiring as they are moving. Photographers whose images are featured in this book include Sølve Sundsbø, Glen Luchford, Stephen Shore, Mert & Marcus, Diana Markosian, Martin Parr, Martine Franck, Alex Webb, Alice Hawkins, and Nick Knight. This is the perfect gift purchase for photography fans, swimmers, and lovers of leisure.

Writer, curator, and broadcaster Lou Stoppard writes regularly for the Financial Times, the New Yorker, and various international editions of Vogue. Exhibitions she has curated include Mad About the Boy (2016, Fashion Space Gallery, London), and North (2017, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; Somerset House, London). Leanne Shapton is an author, artist, and publisher based in New York City. Swimming Studies won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography and was long-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2012. She published Guestbook: Ghost Stories in 2019.