2027 marks the ten year anniversary of DRobertsPhoto.com and 2026 of my photographic journey. I have decided to compile the events of the past decade as an independent photographer chasing mastery in an industry chasing metrics.

As with Discover Temples of Thailand I will not just be documenting my decade-long journey prior but the very process in which I will be tackling a retrospective. Although we are only just approaching the end of 2025; health issues dictate that I spend more time in the office and less in the field. I believe it is the prime time to asses what materials I have from these past nine years and begin assembly of what will be my first retrospective.

My first hurdle that I have faced is even accepting that a retrospective may be the best course of action for DRobertsPhoto and my current positioning. I am very adamant in the separation between legacy creators (whom I have much respect for, and relationships with many) and myself. I pride myself on being contemporary in the truest sense, that I am actively creating and actively challenging the status quo with avant-garde ideals. As such a retrospective is the absolute antithesis of DRobertsPhoto if one is to look at the word semantically.

I admire the work of many Asian photographers who have produced work trough the late 1980’s to early 2000’s but my standing and the industry status quo are worlds away from what once was. Firstly, their perspective is Western, and comes with the inherent bias of a Western-eye. My dual-nationality mitigates this. For those who wish to achieve what was once possible, emulating these photographers is now impossible. In-roads and paths to these careers are dead. I am able to connect with these photographers as they captured the Thailand I was raised in, before concrete dominated, as such I feel much kinship. However, through many conversations I have come to realise that East or West, this is no longer their world. In this way, I believe a ten year retrospective of my work arguably will have greater merit in the current discourse.

What I propose will be a twofold opportunity. Internally, it will be an opportunity to re-asses the steps that led me to this point, and allows me to continue in a way that does not endanger my health further. Externally I will attempt to blend what I have learned from writing Too Quiet for the Algorithm Too Loud for Any Room, which leaned heavily on biography to assert it’s manifesto, to create a work that spans biography, technical pedagogy and personal manifesto. this way it will not be an egotistical piece of self-congratulation but an extension of the essays and field reports I have been creating independently (post-editorial). I have taken the mantle of Promethius and I belive that a ten-year retrospective would be the kindling that the photographic community needs. For the industry to change — consensus must change. This is a valuable lesson I have learned from Discover Temples of Thailand and my interaction with the industries leading houses.

The work itself in this ideation phase is heavily inspired by Katsuya Terada-Sensei’s Ten. His ten-year retrospective does not focus on continuity but embraces his array of works from character design to his few short-form series such as The Monkey King. This work is heavily annotated and even contains highly developed but ultimately unfinished ideas. I believe this mirrors my position within photography, as the retrospective will be the cradle; the formation of who I am and what DRobertsPhoto is — rather that what it was. My work spans multiple countries across Asia and Europe, multiple technical trials from film to digital and across brands, from independent roots to editorial and back again to independence. This is a journey that no other contemporary photographer can claim, especially to the extent of institutional and industry interest of which I have received. My journey is not that of education to fellowship or in-house salaried work, or most important of all, it does not reflect the current wave of social media centric independents.

At this stage my thoughts are that by separating the retrospective into distinct categories I will be able to reach the people who need it most: be it creatives who are here of ideology, technicality or those invested in the work itself. By separating it into Camera lineage (pedagogy), Location (Biography), and Projects (manifesto) I am able to tackle specific issues in micro whist retaining macro context. How this ultimately pans out only time will tell. The working title will be Ten Years of DRobertsPhoto with the subheading A Retrospective of the Formative Decade but I may change this to DRobertsPhoto: The First Decade or DRobertsPhoto: A Decade of Iconoclasm if the end product leans literary.