East Texas
Winona | Starnes General Store | McClung House | Sam Gary Farm | Tyler Texas | Love's Lookout | Along The Road | Highway 80
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I was born in a small town in East Texas, but haven’t lived in that part of the world for over half a century. It is, however, a place to which I’m drawn, and where I undertook my first serious photo project, in 1971. I’ve also always felt that while it is possible to take fine photographs in an unfamiliar location, your hit ratio is likely to be better in a place where there is some emotional attachment. Such is the case with East Texas. Most of the small East Texas towns I've photographed over the years haven’t had an easy time of it. Small towns all over the country have been hard hit since World War II, but some of those in East Texas have been hit hard enough to cause them to vanish. Many of the things I photographed in these towns show the vanished past. These hamlets and small towns seemed to have something of a future after the turn of the last century, and particularly when oil came in a few years later. The promise of a brighter future has rarely been forthcoming. The town with a thousand citizens now has a few hundred; a hamlet with a few hundred now has but a handful. Except for a single picture from 1963, the earliest photographs from Texas date from two extended trips in 1971 and 1972, followed by another in 1977 and another in 1989. There are not many pictures in terms of volume, but I’m very pleased with those that work, and as I said, the hit ratio is far better than average. In recent years I've undertaken new projects in East Texas and these photographs, taken in 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009, merge nicely with those I took so long ago. |