Artist’s Statement
The photographs in the two books My San Antonio were made in my mid-twenties, during a brief residence in San Antonio, Texas, 1975 to ’76. I had moved there specifically to document the city’s distinctive character that was reflected both in its ethnic diversity, and in its architectural artifacts. As a photographic undertaking, my year’s work in San Antonio is characterized as documentary: Things are what they seem. Rather than imposing an artistic vision, I photographed anything that interested me with a straightforward approach.
While celebrated as the birthplace of Anglo-Texan liberty, the Mexican heritage half of the citizenry maintained a stature equal to the Anglos; Mexican vaqueros had their rodeos, and Anglo debutantes their sequined gowns. There were others, the indigenous, who struggled to survive culturally. All these people are the focus of Book One, photographs made with a handheld 35mm camera.
Book Two, shot with a view camera on tripod, looks primarily at ephemera, sometimes discarded in heaps, and civic structures either enduring or falling into disrepair. I was motivated to capture the nature of a very old city that I saw threatened by modernization. Each photograph tells a story of pride, enterprise, faith and quality of life. The photos that follow here are a blend of both Books One and Two.
As devoted as I was to my work for those two years, I was only a visitor to San Antonio; I spoke with no native authority. Yet, in 1976, I was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to produce an exhibition of my words and photographs titled San Antonio: What Is At Issue?, an examination of the historic humanitarian concerns of the city. Not long afterward, and just married to Ginger, we left San Antonio for Providence and my masters degree program at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Both My San Antonio books can be viewed in full, for no cost, at the printer’s website:
Book One: https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1962762?__r=3246530
Book Two: https://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1962784?__r=3246530