David Keith Brown

It was the maps of the world on the walls of my boyhood classrooms that first inspired me to travel, and the Time-Life books on photography from my mother that as a teen first inspired me to shoot. Yet it wasn’t until the age 23 that I finally acquired the means to purchase my first SLR camera, and with that I hit the road, rough travelling a long stretch of Europe and Asia, that new camera in hand. So began a habit never since lost.

While it was “travel” that got me going and which I still occasionally shoot, it is now what is termed “street” where my real passions lie. Fortunately, residing as I do now in Southeast Asia, the streets are abuzz, fully alive. Activities of all sorts immediately engulf one with the first steps out the door, so much of the daily business often done behind closed doors in the West here openly exhibited. With subject manner seldom in short supply, and one learns quickly to always have a camera within reach.

I often shoot solo, eyes wide open, seeking order in the disorder, design in the chaos. Just as often I operate as half of a pair, exploring in close proximity with my partner, a budding photographer in her own right. At other times I find myself further afield, roaming the streets of foreign countries with other like-minded photographers, having had the pleasure of meeting a number of these at workshops, exhibitions, and other happenings across the globe. Recent events, of course, have made much of this difficult if not impossible, yet still the community holds. Yeah, may the world we live in soon be healed, soon be fully free once again.