Publisher's Synopsis
The Philippines, where we live, is an extraordinary, three-dimensional paradox. There are the most stunning landscapes and the most unbelievably squalid towns and settlements. There is shiny affluence of a Western kind, side-by-side with endemic poverty. We can just as easily find light and laughter as we can find abject despair and the absolute darkness of the human soul.One of us takes photographs to interpret what he sees; the other one does the same thing with word-pictures. We wondered whether we could produce a "montage" of our surroundings. Keith says: "Jim's photographs and my writing are our individual ways of observing and interpreting our world - a fairly remote island in the Western Visayas just across a strait from one of the country's biggest cities. The island, like much of the rest of the country, is a place of stark contrasts: rich and poor; indolence and endeavor; the sublime and the ugly; tranquility and gross noise pollution - it is in almost every sense, Beauty and the Beast. In this book, our words and the images sit side by side. The photographs are not intended as an "illustration" of the words in the old-fashioned way and neither are the words a mere "explanation" of the photographs. They stand together, independent in their own space and yet occupying the same dimension."
