Mark Hedengren: The Invincibility Fable

Go jump off a cliff! There’s something that draws young people to risky behavior, and, as photographer Mark Hedengren found, there’s a swimming hole not too far from almost every small town. His photography collection The Invincibility Fable, the latest installment in the Locals Only Gallery at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, looks at the pastimes of young people in areas of the country where their only recreation is jumping into a lake. Of course, drinking, drugs and risky sexual behavior often accompany their partying at the swimming hole.

But there is something nostalgic, even timeless, in Hedengren’s portraits of kids caught up in the enjoyment of an elemental force of nature, an activity as old as humanity itself. The swimming hole is a part of Americana, and some of these photos seem like they could as easily have been taken last summer as 50 or 100 years ago. (Brian Staker)