I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Tuesday April 14th — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Tuesday April 14th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Tuesday April 14th — —

Lush Life by Katja Kremenić

And yet another extraordinary analogue series by the super talented Berlin-based Croatian photographer Katja Kremenić. For the beautiful series which she named ‘Lush Life’, Katja once again finds herself in paradise, on the beaches of Central American Costa Rica – where she also shot her ‘Rip Currents‘ series, through which we discovered her work – this time creating a visual narrative in her signature romantic free-floating style for the inspirational Australia-based travel platform The Adventure Handbook. Kremenić continues to excel in translating a broad field of emotions into her photographs, making the fragmentations of her gaze almost tangible through the frames of her images. Her continuing fascination with the beach both proves to be an everlasting source of aesthetic inspiration in the creation of her highly appealing images as the perfect environment for her to create in. We can’t wait for more beautiful stories by Katja Kremenić.

Very often photography, instead of words, satisfies my need for expression. Photography answers the immediate need to respond to surroundings. I shoot mostly with analog equipment and film. It gives me a special feeling and I haven’t found anything similar that could replace it.

Katja on the effect of the beauty of Costa Rica on her, which clearly transcends throughout the whole series:

In a place like that you wake up with ease at 6AM to shoot photos, go running or surfing, as you don’t want to waste any time before the sun sets in twelve hours. It transforms you in to an adventurous, courageous & energetic version of yourself attuned to even the most intimate details in the environment. And don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of love in my life. I laugh really hard a lot. But because so many things on adventures like this one touch me in a profound way, looking at photos afterwords make me miss this other kind of life. It’s just one of those common longings… For a life full of endless adventure, spontaneous road trips, unseen sights, wildest sounds, unimaginable colors, sunsets, sunrises, fires and love.

The Adventure Handbook is an independent collective of storytellers from Australia, brought together by the goal of redefining travel writing and the meaning of ‘adventure’, founded by photographers Ryan Kenny and Luke Byrne, creative Ben Tan and writer Oliver Mol, who in turn team up with their extended family from around the globe to share honest stories to inspire people to get out there. To feed that family the platform aims to partner up with like-minded brands to produce creative solutions infused with the spirit of adventure and the art of storytelling. In the year The Adventure Handbook has been online, it has shared a collection of consistently beautiful stories, illustrated by imagery full of character, making the platform one of the most interesting online destinations available.

We realized that a lot of the people we’d associated with ‘travel’ or ‘adventure travel’ or had read about in travel magazines seemed really overtly ‘cool’ or ‘masculine’: boring, basically. They seemed to have everything together, and we weren’t interested in that. Because we’re a bunch of photographers and graphic designers and writers, we realized we could make something new. Something that was more honest and uncertain.

For more work by Katja see here.

Read and see the full story on The Adventure Handbook here.