Last week I made a quick trip down to suburban Philadelphia to meet up with Tim Miller of Texas Equusearch and his search for missing 29-year old nurse and mother Toni Sharpless who disappeared on Aug. 23, 2009. When I first met Tim on a People Magazine shoot a couple of years ago I was so struck by his incredible drive and determination that I’ve stayed in touch over the last couple of years in hopes of creating a long-term document on civilian search-and-rescue teams and Tim’s personal story. The day spent in Philly with Tim easily pointed out how important the project is and also how lackluster my attempts to truly dig into the guts of shooting it.
My plan was pretty simple: keep shooting when I had the free time and Tim and his team were relatively close to wherever I was, and hopefully get one of my clients interested (several were, but wanted to see where it was going) enough to give me the freedom to make it a priority and devote money and time to make it real. But looking at my pictures over the last few searches its easy to see that it’s just not enough. It’s akin to waiting for the phone to ring instead of getting out there yourself. A personal project is just that, personal. If you aren’t personally willing to devote the resources you can hardly expect anyone else to (unless you are one of the thinning few documentary photographers in the world who have that sort of carte blanche). So it’s obviously time for a new plan.
This search was Tim’s 1,093rd which is almost unbelievable for a non-profit, civilian team to have executed in the last 10 years (Tim explained that the number is misleading because he only did about a half dozen searches each of the first two years). Both Tim and the detectives believed that Toni Sharpless’ car would be found in a river (the first image above is of the boat ramp where the search was focused) about a 1/2 mile from where she was last seen (today the media reports that police now do not believe the car is in the river after all).
Long-term projects are really hard even under the best of circumstances. Really good ones come from photographers who stick it out and spend the time to be there for the important moments which give a story its arc, going back again and again and again. There are also skill factors, planning and other stuff, but mostly it’s a matter of time and timing. Knowing this as I do I’m excited to keep at it and continue to push myself to do more and better. The story to me isn’t really just a story anymore, it’s become personally important to try to expose and promote Tim’s mission and passion. I mean this as an attempt of advocacy, not simply illustration. And so I’m going to continue to be in close contact with Tim and the team and head down to Texas for a chunk of time as soon as possible to give my project the energy it deserves. I’ll report back to share where the road takes the project.
Keep at it John. Seems like an inspiring story and I’d like to see where it takes you.