Amphibious Lives

Amphibious Lives traces coastal worlds where land and water continually mingle. Waves inundate the shore with the changing seasons; fish corrals emerge and disappear with the tides; boats float in calm weather and are hauled ashore before typhoons; and fishers build shelters atop floating fish cages. Human and nonhuman lives move through these shifting conditions, shaped by tides, currents, weather, changing shorelines, and the infrastructures that bridge sea and land. The eight photographs offer glimpses of this amphibious existence in the coastal Philippines. The series opens at low tide, when the skeletal frames of fish corrals stretch across exposed shallows beneath gathering clouds. Within these structures, a fisher balances on narrow bamboo poles while repairing a corral. Farther offshore, fishing structures cluster across the water like a floating village of stilted dwellings. Small huts rise above fish cages, sheltering fishers, and sometimes their dogs, who stay through the night to guard high-value fish before they are harvested and brought to market. Along the shore, the day’s catch is spread across wooden drying beds raised above shallow water, allowing bodily moisture and residue to drain back into the sea as the fish dry under the sun. The later photographs turn toward the fragility of amphibious lives. A damaged fish cage shelter slumps into the water, its broken bamboo frame reflected on the surface. In another image, a fisher sits amid the wreckage of boats destroyed by a storm he survived. The series closes with gillnet fishers working together to haul a boat ashore ahead of a super typhoon expected the following day. These everyday rhythms contain both steadiness and vulnerability. Salt, wind, waves, and weather steadily wear things down. Boats sink. Corrals collapse. Fish cages break. Drying beds rot. Little remains fixed for long. Yet amphibious lives persist not through permanence, but through continual acts of maintenance, repair, and rebuilding. Year after year, boats return to the water, corrals rise again, cages are repaired, and drying beds rebuilt. Living between land and sea means inhabiting a world that is continually being made, unmade, and made again.