Visual Arts - Water world

Before the Chattahoochee River became Atlanta’s Big Gulp, there was a little tributary trickling through the city called Peachtree Creek, which quenched the thirsts, powered the lights and baptized the souls of the city’s citizenry.

Photographer and urban explorer Dave Kaufman was so drawn to the idea of this forgotten crik around which much of Atlanta once flourished, that he put his canoe into the sewage-laden stream and began a 12-year paddle exploring the conjoined histories of Atlanta and the waterway.

The larger, captivating portrait of the world that opened up to Kaufman via Peachtree Creek — from the ruins of the dilapidated Decatur Waterworks, to parks filled with human waste — will be given its proper, multifaceted treatment with the publication of a folksy, engaging book titled Peachtree Creek: A Natural and Unnatural History of Atlanta’s Watershed. A combination of history, photography and the author’s first-person account of his adventures avoiding the trash and talking to the fishermen and homeless whose lives still intersect with the creek will be published in October by Hill Street Press and the Atlanta History Center.

For now, an array of large-format photographs documenting Kaufman’s watery meander are on view at Fernbank Museum of Natural History.

The small selection of images on view at Fernbank tend to emphasize the landscape tradition of sublime Currier & Ives beauty. Photographs taken at fall’s full, riotous bloom predominate, as in an especially surreal, almost Gregory Crewdson-esque view of “Beaver Pond,” featuring an algae-covered surface the color of lime green golf pants offset by flaming red foliage.

Acknowledging Peachtree’s more sordid side, one photograph at Fernbank is of a sign declaring “this is an urban creek,” thus testifying to the extreme peril of fording Peachtree Creek. But overall, the exhibition downplays the creek’s humiliated present condition as a dumping ground for sewage and discarded shopping carts, which is underscored in Kaufman’s more ecologically minded book.

Kaufman’s investment in this maligned and forgotten creek is apparent, and what he has done is admirable: serving as a kind of archeologist of a place still with us. In the process, he unfurls a secret side to the city. Tracing a shared history of a place whose natural bounty served many, Kaufman champions this creek whose preservation serves all.

Peachtree Creek: A Natural and Unnatural History runs through Jan. 16 at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 767 Clifton Road. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. noon-5 p.m. 404-929-6300. www.fernbank.edu/museum. $12 adults, $11 students and seniors, $10 children 12 and under.