The End of Barton Creek?
I begin with a caveat. This abbreviated portfolio of “wildlife” photographs from the seventies does not proclaim or prove THE END OF AUSTIN so much as it poses a question. … Continue reading
Native Bees and Austin’s Unrelenting Growth
Most of us know by now that Austin is a great place to live. I’ve been here my entire life and watched the city grow up with me. A lot … Continue reading
Documenting Barton Springs: An Interview with Karen Kocher, Creator of “Living Springs.”
Karen Kocher is one of the foremost documentary chroniclers of the historical, ecological, and cultural importance of Barton Springs to the city of Austin. Her current interactive online documentary project, … Continue reading
Goodbye to a River?
In May of 2014 I returned to Austin for one last research trip before finally sitting down and completing my book on Austin’s history. Having been gone from Texas for … Continue reading
Dead Horses
This is a story about Austin’s changing environment and a terrible episode of how a flood displaced an entire urban neighborhood, but it’s also a story about horses, and so … Continue reading
Downstream
Without belonging to a particular incident, place, or act, these images are traces of another city where water drips slowly through the cracks, draining away the undesired and disposable. Until … Continue reading
Grackles and Old Cars
Grackles are sleek birds that wear the expression of rapacious fishes. Many years of cohabitation with humans has not loosened the danger on which they seem to insist. Perhaps it … Continue reading
The Right to the Enchanted City?
It is said that Austin’s “violet crown” comes from the purple glow of the horizon emanating from the western hills at sunset. Its first known reference came from an 1894 … Continue reading
The End of Austin 