My Relationship With Gear: Part Four

This article may be the most ironic of all, not because this entire site from late-2022 to late-2026 is part four, but that this is likely the most important part and will be public for a week or two at most if I follow through with publishing it. I’m thinking, very hard, about stepping away from the internet completely. I stepped away from Instagram (for the most part), and now going on there to just check messages or post when I feel the need, physically angers me. I am inundated, of no choice of my own, with the absurdity of the current discourse. I am completely underwhelmed with all communications I do receive or participate in. This has followed through into Linkedin, which as a standing testament to why the world is as it is if these are the decision makers of our generation.

I have spent the majority of my time since the start of 2025, give or take a year and a half, pretty much at my desk. I don’t like it. This isn’t the life I chose to live. I didn’t come to Thailand just for the Western world and all that ails it to follow me over radio waves. I saw a barren playing field and thought to myself that it was a lack of talent, which is undeniable, but it turns out that the lack of talent was just six-out-of-ten the machine doing its job. For many photography is a hobby, a side-hustle, a profession even, but not many treat it as a calling. Not the way a Doctor or a Teacher, or even a Musician, may. Photography is my calling. But what is left, whatever “this” is, this is not what I love, not what I loved, not what I would call photography.

I’m a soldier, was born one, raised one, became one, and even after I left, it never left me. I don’t dance, and I don’t do social niceties. I gave the industry the opportunity to raise itself and meet me, but the conclusion I have come to is spinelessness. Either spinelessness in silence, where their smallness speaks loudly, or just spinelessness in that despite alternate viewpoints, they were unwilling to confront me so I was left with free-reign. I will never truly know, as Kafka said “I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face” — none of this feels like victory. None of this feels like I even had an opponent. Originally i felt proud of my features, my by-lines, my partnerships. now I ask “Were they just too afraid to say no?”

I used to love gear, it excited me to no end. I used to love photographing everything. I used to love printing my work, and talking about it. The obvious and incorrect diagnoses would be burnout, but far from it. I’m ready to go back out there, chomping at the bit. I just don’t want the weight of a useless jockey. Which is a far more deep-seated issue. In fact I think this is the very issue my entire life’s work has been circling. What would a horse do if there was no stable? no hay? no coat in the winter? He’d be just fine, but humanity won’t leave him alone. No longer are the fields fields, but property. No longer is running a part of ones nature, but a sport to be wagered on. A mustang’s role is to be broken, often publicly and for entertainment. Isn’t that just the micro effect of macro economics? A part of me wishes I could just go catch fish and plant rice, but I know from documenting enough farmers that even that isn’t enough. What’s yours isn’t even yours anymore. No one is left to be. Plus, I couldn’t if I tried. Removing myself from modernity would be like telling a heroine addict to go cold-turkey.