Leaping into summer

More than 500 outdoor and natural swimming pools are dotted around Switzerland, some of which are over 100 years old. For many, the summer season has begun.

It was a hot and heavy summer week and the demand for photoshoots was correspondingly dull. And so the photographer Benjamin Manser killed time with friends at the Arbon outdoor pool in northeastern Switzerland.

“Personally I don’t like going into the water that much. I dozed a lot, fell asleep and woke up again and again because of the screaming and the shouting coming from the direction of the diving tower,” Manser says.

Fascinated, he began to watch the jumpers, though he would never dare to climb up, even for a better view of the ten-metre platform. The next day he took his camera with him to the pool and began to ask the daring divers if he could capture them in flight. (The swimming pool regulations state: “Filming and photographing is only permitted in consultation with those responsible for the swimming pool”.)

No bottom, no top

From this simple situation, a series of pictures was created that captivates with its equally formal simplicity. The bodies captured by the camera float between the concrete platform and the water surface, both outside the picture.

It’s a moment in which there seems to be no bottom and no top; a moment into which you can let yourself fall; a moment of freedom.