“I used to think of myself as a photographer until I finally realized that photographs aren’t the point. They’re just a part of the process. It’s not pictures I’ve been after all this time, it’s stories and my entire life has been about finding and telling stories that strike an emotional chord on some level. If anything, I’m a writer who takes photographs.”
I grew up in south Texas, in the brush country between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers and along the coastal islands of the Gulf of Mexico. These landscapes are seared into my soul and try as I might to escape them they always coming rushing back. John Houhgton Allen, an all but forgotten son of these same lands once said something to this effect. Speaking of his home ranch, the Jesus Maria, and the adjacent but now deserted town of Randado, Allen wrote, “A man can never get away from his home country. It’s like running away from God. I’ve been everywhere, done everything to put Randado out of time and mind. The memories die piecemeal in the heart, but the land returns.”
My father was the youngest of six boys born into a ranching family. From an early age I was exposed to this way of life and to the cattle business. My family owned and operated several ranches throughout south Texas and my grandfather was responsible for patenting frozen embryo transplant. My earliest memories are of the cattle auctions on Saturday mornings at the sale barn on the home property just west of San Antonio and of watching my dad and his brothers work. I grew steeped in their stories - tales of traveling with frozen embryos in briefcases to Mexico, Venezuela, Columbia, Brazil and countries all over Latin and South America. From an early age, there was little doubt in my mind that I would grow up to be a rancher. But fate had a different path in store for the family and for my life.
Through a series of poor business decisions, compounded by a major downturn in the cattle market, the family slowly lost all of the ranches until only the home property was left. In due time that was also lost and the family retreated to San Antonio. My father and his father before him both left this life earlier than they should have and I can’t help but think that the loss of identity along with the loss of their home was to blame for that.
I believe all families have their period of greatness, or at least it can feel that way. A generation will grow up hearing stories of what they perceive to be the golden era they missed out on. It certainly felt that way for me. By the time I came of age those days had passed and the life I had envisioned for myself since boyhood was no longer available. I struggled for any semblance of direction, desperately trying to find my own way. I became an avid reader, probably hoping some book would give me the answers I was searching for and while at university I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Africa and books of Africa. I read everything I could get my hands on and when the day came for me to walk the stage at graduation, I boarded a plane for Africa instead. I had no definite plan or timeframe in mind, but a trip that I had envisioned lasting a few months, turned instead into a nomadic existence that lasted years. I worked my way north from South Africa to Botswana, then Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and finally Tanzania and later Kenya. There were also stints of travel to Ethiopia and the rainforests of west Africa and the arid savannas of the Sahel. And then there were places well beyond Africa like Russia, Australia and northern Canada. I spent years working in the Caribbean and the southern Amazon basin of Brazil - all the while carrying a camera. I had never given much thought to a career or to my future. I was simply looking for my place in the world.
It was only after coming home to Texas and starting a family of my own, that I finally understood what all those photographs meant and what I was looking for all those years. Starting my own family helped me grasp both the burden and the value of legacy. It also helped me realize that those legacies matter and that they outlive individuals, they transcend time. And, when it’s all said and done, it’s the stories that remain.