Springing backward.

WILL VAN OVERBEEK: 24 SUMMERS AT BARTON SPRINGS POOL

AUSTIN MUSEUM OF ART

AUSTIN, TEXAS

MAY 19-AUGUST 12, 2007

Barton Springs, located in Austin, Texas, covers three acres in Zilker Park. With a supply of fresh underground water, the average temperature hovers around sixty-eight degrees throughout the year, attracting many tourists and residents. However, this natural site becomes the most significant respite when the high temperatures arrive each summer. In 1983, after studying photography with Russell Lee and Gary Winogrand at the University of Texas, Will van Overbeek photographed the pool at Barton Springs for Rolling Stone magazine and expanded it into the book 24 Summers, seeking to capture the exchange between geography and the experiences therein. Developed over the course of twenty-four years, the photographer collected the shared experience of vast numbers of people while bearing witness to little visual change in the landscape.

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Barton Springs is the fourth largest spring in Texas and was created after land shifted, rendering the Balcones Fault. The springs became a park in 1918. Flowing through the Edwards Aquifier, this site hosted a diverse number of functions including baptisms and musical performances. Centuries ago, the Native Americans used these waters as a healing source. Overbeek's photographs in the exhibition "24 Summers at Barton Springs Pool" build upon this extensive history and capture a communal life in its own ebullient stasis. Sunbathing (1996) depicts three young women laying in the sun without making the viewer feel like a voyeur. In fact, most of the subjects rarely look directly at the camera or seem to even know that it is there. However, Girls Leaping (1996) reveals a co-operation between the photographer and his subject to render that precarious second before the splash pulls one underwater.

Populated landscapes can pose problems for photographers since the depiction of people as subjects not only distracts the eye from the surrounding environment but could potentially distance the viewer. "'Around here,' where we live," wrote Lucy Lippard, "is a circular notion, embracing and radiating from the specific place where generalizations about land, landscape, and nature come home to roost. 'Out there' is a line of sight, the view, a metaphor for linear time." (1) In the 1970s, Stephen Shore explored the colorful but unpopulated landscape. As seen in the earlier Farm Security Administration photographs of Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, and Ben Shahn, the inclusion of human subjects brought looming issues into the frame. Overbeek has also sidestepped the voyeuristic trap within his documentary work by either engaging his subjects directly or literally, shooting from the hip. While not capturing anyone in particular, the photographer clearly renders what people experience at Barton Springs.

The Kiss (1999) captures a man walking briskly past the camera in the foreground while a couple can be seen engaging in a romantic kiss just beyond in front of the deep, populated background. Although the title attempts to guide one's attention, the actual subject that is the picture's focus is left up for debate. Two Underwater (2006) and Yellow Fins (1999) feature a bird's-eye view and depict three individuals immersed in water. As people move around, unaware of the camera's lens, Overbeek's work lends significant meaning to the notion of place.

However, before one is completely lost in the subjects' recreational activities, one wonders if the photographer is drawing attention to something else: the precarious future of Barton Springs' natural vitality at the hands of increasing urban development around Austin. In this light, "24 Summers" serves a timely purpose and stands as a colorful look upon a site that has served as a source of inspiration. Lippard points out:

If place is defined by memory, but no one who remembers is left to

bring these memories to the surface, does a place become noplace, or

only a landscape? What if there are people with memories but no one to

transmit them to? Are their memories invalidated by being unspoken?

Are they still valuable to others with a less personal connection? (2)

As Manhattan continues its suburbanization and its Disney-fication of Coney Island, the city of Austin also risks losing a significant piece of its civic life. Overbeek takes photography away from its most alluring subject, the bustling urban center, and reveals how a particular natural environment has continued to define local identity along with individual experience.

JILL CONNER is an art critic based in New York City.

NOTES 1. Lucy Lippard, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society (New York: New Press, 1997). 23. 2. Ibid.