Lodown CRUSH

You can basically have a crush on anything. A person. A song. A piece of art. An object. You name it. Usually, this kind of attraction isn’t lasting too long, and more than often it proves ineffective. But since your feelings cannot be forced or manufactured, things can go south pretty easily as you experience an innocent crush turning into a full-blown obsession. Either way, crushes are a quintessential and ubiquitous aspect of the human experience, I guess. You could also try your very best to crush a system in case you believe that the economic, political and social aspects on display aren’t necessarily working in your favor. Having the occasional fling with reality could be a helpful tool to clear your head in the aforementioned cases, though.

In our case, the whole crush situation is a rewardingly easy one: we simply call a strong infatuation towards summer our own. Because it’s actual the only season where feelings of longing and a strong affinity to daydreaming seem to be at a constant high. And that’s exactly why this issue seems to be a bit more light, fleeting, flirty and giddy in comparison.

Enjoy. And treat yourself with summers natural aphrodisiac.

KARABO MOOKIE… The brilliant thing about authenticity is that you are either authentic or not. There’s no way to try it, no way to buy it. And that’s why, in the current climate of everybody wanting to be everything at any given time in praise of rising follower numbers, the work of Johannesburg-based photographer and filmmaker Karabo Mooki - and the way he explores local subcultures - cannot be appreciated highly enough.

ALISON BLICKLE… Myths are deeply embedded in basically every culture on our planet. They were necessities to explain our surroundings and the world itself, long before any kind of elaborate academic vocabulary offered a different view on things. And, in actuality, people still love to create them in order to make sense of a world that’s changing at warp speed.

DRE DOGUE… If you understand life as a state less shaped by borders and rules but by connectivity and options, then it makes perfect sense to be constantly in motion instead of showboating your permanent residence. And celebrated photographer Dre Dogue does exactly that.

JAY WILKINSON … Your sense of self is much more defined by what your mind tells you about yourself than by the actual truths your very own storyline is offering. It’s way more fiction less facts. It’s basically a composition of disjointed half-truths placed on a rather porous timeline that keeps you going.

- plus more elaborate features and visual awesomeness from the likes of: John Brosio, Sunandbass, Mark Gonzales, LA Pools, and many others.