While a student at Vassar College, Caleb Stein discovered the watering hole where locals go to swim. Since his graduation, he has returned summer after summer to photograph the locals at their favorite spot, such as these two friends holding each other in an embrace. For Stein, the watering hole represents not only a leisure area to escape the summer heat, but also a neutral zone to flee the political tensions that mark American life. Stein’s portraits at the watering hole are the result of conversations and collaborations with the people he encounters there, becoming celebratory pictures of their personalities.