Photo Journal - Asia
In 2014, we had a gig scheduled in the Philippines, but very quickly realized we needed to expand that trip into a fun-sized tour through South East Asia. So, we broke open our piggy banks and did just that. The plan was to head to the Philippines to tag-team a job as cinematographers on a feature length film. The shoot lasted 3 weeks and had a fantastic cast/crew to show us around the beach town of Boracay. After wrapping on that project we extended the trip and took a ship to Caticlan, then a plane to Manila for a few days, then Hong Kong, Kyoto, and then, finally, an overnight bus ride to Tokyo.
The extended part of the trip was jam-packed and honestly a struggle at times without a crew of locals to lean on, especially as we took on cities with a much starker cultural rift than that of the Philippines (culturally the unofficial 51st state). When we landed in China, we felt very much alone, and the few days we had in each city went by at a break-neck speed. We both knew, however, that just by being in these cities of South East Asia -- these places that we had both seen as icons of culture inspiring us for years -- we just had to just try to take in everything a day at a time, and if we did that, we couldn't lose. It turned out we didn't mind so much being alone either.
I think experiencing cultural rifts and individual rifts; the ideas of permanence and impermanence; authority and submission; expectations and reality; identity and the recursive nature of society, are all running themes from the trip that I was dealing with while working on these photos.
