HomepageNewsDevil’s Pool: The Body In Relation to Self

Devil’s Pool: The Body In Relation to Self

Camera in hand, Sarah Kaufman travels off the beaten path to find moments where “the body is in harmony with the environment.”

Her favorite locale? A swimming hole in the middle of Wissahickon Park, a preserved wood sprawling through Northwest Philadelphia. Where the Cresheim Creek meets the Wissahickon Creek, you might find Kaufman picnicking with other locals, who swim, play music, and even lounge on the high rocks. Over the course of 7 years from early 2014 to late 2020, Kaufman spent weekdays and weekends in Devil’s Pool capturing this natural revelry, moments of contemplation, the cold hush of danger as a swimmer leaps from a six-story stone bridge to the shallow mossy pool below, and the communal sigh of relief as the pool releases the splashing swimmer to surface.

After months and months of shooting, editing, sequencing, and designing, Kaufman has completed her photobook entitled Devil’s Pool, which is being published by Daylight Books. Meanwhile, she has created new course entitled The Art of the Photobook, which she will be teaching again in the spring.

“At Devil’s Pool, I am able to expand my admiring picture of everyday bodies, their owners absorbed in un-self conscious presence. There’s something about the nature here that can’t help but prevail.”

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