Here are seven of August’s most loved photo stories from Dazed’s art and photography section. As we move from summer into autumn and the weather starts to turn, you’ll find a few sun-drenched projects alongside more waterlogged series of images. Vincent Wechselberger’s latest project documents a summer interlude in Berlin and Lin Zhipeng (AKA No. 223) continues to channel summertime lust and heat, while Mumbai-based photographer Yash Sheth prefers to chase rainstorms with his camera. Chardchakaj Waikawee pursues the energetic and spirited inhabitants of Bangkok’s more marginal subcultures, while the late Bob Carlos Clarke obsessively pursued perfection. Nick Haymes spent over two decades documenting what is, in many ways, the opposite of perfection – the mundane moments that, in their multitude, add up to something extraordinary. And, finally, WET, a magazine dedicated to “gourmet bathing”, offers an elevated world of perfect, hyper-specific luxury. 

NICK HAYMES, CHRONOGRAPH

Across almost a thousand photographs, Nick Haymes’ Chronograph traces the intricate webs of seemingly insignificant occurrences in family life as they unfold and accumulate into big stories – the biggest and most all-encompassing stories of our lives... childhood turning into adulthood, the love and camaraderie of siblings, parenthood, and much more. Shot in New York and LA between 2001 and 2026, it takes an affectionate look at the comings and goings of everyday life – the arguments, the laughter, the minor injuries, the illnesses, the love – without straying into sentimentality. “A lot of it is very relatable nothings,” Haymes told Dazed in a recent interview. “There’s no crazy thing. It’s all very obvious. But those nonsensical things make you aware of living more than big monumental moments. Everybody you know, or probably 90 per cent of us, has had a family album at some point that you’ve gathered around and looked upon. It’s the bad things and the useless things that suddenly become the most important and make the most sense to you in life.” 

Read the full story here on Dazed.

BOB CARLOS CLARKE, THE LAST DOLLS

20 years since the taboo-pushing photographer’s death, The Last Dolls revisits some of Bob Carlos Clarke’s most memorable and iconoclastic images. Best known for his erotic, fetishistic portraits of women and latex, his obsession with his subject matter – and with image-making itself – is evident in the meticulous perfection of his striking photographs. While his pictures undoubtedly objectify the women he depicts – often literally so, with wind-up keys and on/off switches – they are nonetheless formidable. His relationship with his own lust isn’t simple – his pictures are as awe-struck and fear-ridden as they are desirous. 

Alongside his portraits of objectified women, the exhibition showcases his arresting photographs of found objects – forks and other bits and pieces discovered on the Thames at low tide – imbued with subjectivity. “He had an ability to take an inanimate object and somehow make it feel human,” continues Scarlett Carlos Clarke. “If he wasn’t in the darkroom, he was always collecting or making things.”

Read the full story here on Dazed

VINCENT WECHSELBERGER, CATCHING UP ON LOST TIME

This summer, old friends photographer Vincent Wechselberger and multidisciplinary artist Noam Yarik Gil Shuster met up for a day in Berlin to reconnect after living in different cities for two years. Despite the allure of the city’s thriving nightlife, the pair opted for a more sedate meeting – drinking coffee, walking around Friedrichshain, biking through the city and eventually swimming in the Spree. “That day, since we were both turning a new page in our lives, escaping into one of Berlin's big green parks just felt like the right thing to do,” Wechselberger explained in a recent conversation with Dazed. In a series of dreamy photographs, they immortalised this brief but significant interlude. He continued, “Even with distance and time apart, we fall right back into an easy rhythm. I think we bring out each other's beauty, physically, but also the inner kind, that feeling of being seen and safe, a sense of calm that not many people get to see.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.

CHARDCHAKAJ WAIKAWEE, YOUTH

For Bangkok–based photographer Chardchakaj Waikawee, youth is a state of being not contingent on age. It’s a kind of energy: a certain pulse and a playful curiosity. It’s a quality he’s observed persisting in elderly people even as he’s noticed it prematurely extinguished in the eyes of teenagers and kids he’s encountered. This elusive but electric spirit is what characterises his portraits of people he meets in Bangkok. Waikawee is fascinated by people and, as a street photographer, he has a roving eye for idiosyncrasy, humour, irony and style. Bangkok offers the perfect mix of high-octane chaos and contradictions that animates his pictures. “For me, Bangkok isn’t just a city. It’s a living organism,” he explained in a recent interview with Dazed. “What fascinates me most are its contradictions. In Bangkok, you might see a homeless person sleeping outside the Grand Palace. A sex worker standing just outside a Buddhist temple. A monk walking past a beer bar. A billionaire collecting sacred Buddhist amulets while someone with almost nothing donates their last savings to a temple.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.

LIN ZHIPENG (AKA NO. 223), QIXI

Feccund with fruit, flowers and flesh, Lin Zhipeng (AKA No. 223)’s exhibition with Saint Laurent – the latest of many collaborations – is curated from the Beijing-based photographer’s archive on the theme of Qixi, the Chinese Valentine’s festival. As such, this configuration of his lush images is shot through with lust, longing and a sense of summer heat. “Originally from the South, I am captivated by warm light and sultry air,” he explained in a recent interview with Dazed. “I often travel to southern areas and tropical destinations, so a summery aura and mood always shine through my images.” Like summer, this body of work is abundant with blooming flowers and fruit. “[These] are recurring symbols in my photography,” he said. “For me, they represent transience. They are beautiful, tender, ripe and fleeting. They contain desire, growth and inevitable decay.” 

Read the full story here on Dazed.

WET: THE MAGAZINE OF GOURMET BATHING

In 1976, disenchanted architecture graduate Leonard Koren was casting around Los Angeles for inspiration. At some point between the pool parties and photo sessions with volunteer nude models at the city’s bathhouses and beaches, he developed the idea for an ultra-niche magazine that straddled his interests. Inspired as he was by Vogue and Andy Warhol’s Interview, his imagination was caught by Gourmet – a magazine his girlfriend subscribed to. He loved the absurdity of this epicurean interest in food taken to its conclusion of extreme luxury and he decided to apply the same principle to a magazine about what he termed “gourmet bathing”. “I didn’t know what the term meant, but I thought it had a lot of resonance,” he admitted in a recent conversation with Dazed. “There were some people who would say: ‘Gourmet bathing, what’s that? That’s a stupid idea’. But the people who ended up subscribing to it got it.” 

In its brief lifespan – it ran for 34 perfect issues – Koren’s magazine would accrue a cult, elite following and feature the likes of Priscilla Presley, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry and many more. 

Read the full story here on Dazed.

YASH SHETH, THE MONSOON PROJECT

Mumbai-based photographer Yash Sheth has always loved the rain. “Whenever it rains, I would go out,” he told Dazed. “It has always been my favourite time of the year.” When he first began experimenting with a camera, he naturally began documenting monsoon season. The saturated colours, the activity, the movement, the umbrellas, the change of temperature and atmosphere all inject his work with a unique sense of activity and movement. From his home city, the ongoing project began to evolve as he cast a wider net. “The project is not solely about the Bombay rains anymore,” he told us. “It has evolved into a study of the Indian monsoon, climate change and how it is impacting the lives of the people across the country,” he explained. “Climate change has meant that the monsoons are delayed, and when it does come, it is intense and can flood the region,” he said. “I try to document the communities where the crop depends on the rain and how farmers across the country have been impacted by rain.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.