Duration of Presence: Why I Will Never Photograph Singapore
Cattle-Lac, Aubrey TX.
Nobody really gets a PhD in "History." They defend a doctoral thesis on The Invisible Hand of Empire: British Cotton Merchants and the Reshaping of South Asian Labor Markets, 1780–1860, which demonstrates the ability to research and understand deeply. This can be applied to any topic in history.
Likewise, nobody practices "photography" at an advanced level. They practice architecture, fine art, real estate, documentary, portrait, street, or wildlife photography (or any of dozens of sub-genres). You need to focus to improve at anything, after you've developed fundamental skills. Of course, not every photographer wants or needs to get better. Some just want to take good snapshots and share them with friends on their phones, and that's fine.
I've experienced this specialization with several interests across my life. The result is that I can have long conversations about writing, teaching, traditional Japanese martial arts, and now, photography. Only, that's not true. I can't wax poetic about "photography." But I can appreciate my area of focus, which took me five years to figure out: American vernacular documentary. I can appreciate what people like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore are doing, because I do it, too.
Nearly every image I've made and liked is about something that outlasted its original purpose. I'm not shooting decay for shock value; I find dignity and sometimes humor in it.
What I've noticed is, when I travel beyond my deeply familiar territory (that is, Texas), my work looks like it came from a different photographer... because it did. In Manhattan, I'm not an expert. I'm a tourist. I don't understand the landscape in any deep fashion, so I grab interesting-looking scenes. There are a few exceptions to this in some of my recent Chinatown shots, because I stayed on the same block for four days and walked around it daily... so I can see some quality developing there. Duration of presence turns out to be a key variable. But it would take years for me to get to the level of vision in NYC that I have here in Texas.
I plan on moving to the Philippines in five years or so. I had originally thought "Cool! I'll photograph Singapore and Hong Kong and Ho Chi Minh City." Only... I won't. Those global hot-spots have already been exhausted by photographers. I'd just shoot the same waterfall or war memorial or noodle cart that everyone's already seen.
But... deeply exploring Luzon, the island where I'll live... that has potential. Provincial towns with decaying American colonial-era infrastructure. Jeepneys as vernacular object-making at its most extravagant. Agricultural landscapes under pressure from urbanization as it spreads out from metro Manila, one of the most densely-populated regions on Earth. The Ilocos region alone, where my father-in-law was from — Vigan, the tobacco country, the coast — has that same quality of things persisting past their context in the shadow of urbanization that I find here in Texas.
I'm looking forward to retirement now, in a new way. I'm not going to do it all. I'm going to do something very small, very well.