Bruce Weber American, b. 29/3/1946

A turquoise pool in hard Californian sun. A naked young man lies face down on a white foam float with his arms folded under his head and one leg trailing in the water, looking off to the right at nothing in particular. And in the foreground, unhurried, two white swans are swimming across the shallow end.

Nobody explains the swans. They are simply in the pool, orange-billed and enormous, moving in opposite directions with the particular confidence of a bird that knows it has right of way. Out on the grass a white metal chair and a blue floral armchair have been left where somebody last sat in them. A low brick wall holds back the shrubbery. In every other respect this is an ordinary garden on an ordinary afternoon.

The machinery of a Weber photograph is unusually visible here. Take a beautiful young man, put him somewhere expensive, then introduce one element that has no business being there, so the picture stops being an advertisement and starts being a scene. Without the birds this is a boy on a lilo. With them it is a story missing its first and last pages, and neither the boy nor the swans looks remotely surprised by the arrangement.