What we talk about when we talk about summer

Summer is the only season we organize by decree. Winter comes whether anyone agrees to it or not. Summer starts when school lets out, when the office empties in August, when the workshop closes for two weeks. The weather is incidental. What makes it summer is that the usual thing stops.

That is why it is hard to say what summer is. It is not a set of conditions. It is an interruption, and an interruption takes its meaning from whatever it interrupts.

For a child the thing that stops is school, so summer is freedom, and it is the longest unit of time they know. For their parents the same weeks are a problem to solve: eight hours a day that used to be covered and now are not. For a waiter in a coastal town it is not a break at all. It is the season of working doubles while other people rest. For someone living alone in a city, summer is when the city empties out, which is either a relief or the worst month of the year, depending on the person and sometimes depending on the year.

These are not opinions about summer. They are different positions around the same gap. Two people can stand on the same street, in the same heat, on the same Tuesday in July, and be in different seasons.

That is what we are interested in collecting. Not summer as a subject, but the particular version of it that someone was living through when they took the photograph.