Matthew Busch

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Texas School Safety: AR-15s and Security Czars

With the recent El Paso shooting again bringing the issue of guns to the forefront, it makes sense to see how Texas is trying to solve the issue of gun safety in other areas. For a recent article in the Texas Observer I went to Texas City to photograph the district’s response to school shootings. In their schools they’ve added facial recognition software (seen identifying school students through a monitor in the photograph above), they’ve placed AR-15s inside gun safes within schools to use when necessary by official law enforcement, and they’ve appointed a security czar to oversee these new measures.

It’s a serious increase in efforts to prevent something that keeps happening throughout the country and in Texas. This, however, is just one community’s response. And it’s not surprising to me that in Texas this means adding more guns to the issue.

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Mumbai Everyday

Stepping back into Mumbai to see what this place means to me. Here’s some initial forays back into the city. 

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Texas Oyster Reefs

Seeing as how I love to eat oysters, it was amazing to find out that for a long time, the Gulf Coast, and mainly the fishing done from Texas and Louisiana, accounted for 80% of the oyster market in the U.S. in past decades.

But in the past decade, intense storms, poorly planned water management in upstream sources, oil spills, over-harvesting and a changing climate have all decimated the oyster populations in the gulf. So much so that places like The Nature Conservancy are working to rebuild oyster reefs off the Texas coast to try and grow the population back to sustainable levels. 

The Washington Post sent me down to Corpus Christi to see how it’s playing out in the area. I got to tag along with those building the reef and managed to find my way into some oyster fishing operations.

I’m always drawn to the men and women doing work on the ground when it comes to telling these stories. Naturally they understand the issues better than anyone and more often than not are generous with their time in making sure that you understand them too.

On a side note, thank god for Google Translate here because I do not speak Spanish enough to get beyond conversational (I’m working on this!) but Carlos (pictured below) was more than willing to help me out by alternately speaking and reading each other’s remarks to one another from my phone. 

I’ve never seen donuts done with heavy machinery before either, but this man can drive anything. 

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Ballet Ballet

I’ve photographed ballet only a handful of times in my career and I am always left wanting to explore it more. The angles of the human body and what seems like effortless motion are stunning to watch. The body’s ability to show emotion with the movement of a wrist, a turned head exposing a long neck, an outstretched arm or a bend at the waist.... it invites you to pay attention to it all. 

And for some reason the absence of the human voice, usually to the benefit of a live orchestra, allows my mind to pay all the more attention. As I sit in the audience, letting the music wash over everything, I can let my mind wander and just fall into the movement and grace onstage. 

The dedication of dancers, men and women, to get to this point in their careers at such a young age is tremendous.

I had the opportunity to photograph some of San Antonio’s youth dancers and their director Danielle Campbell Steans not too long ago. It was a rewarding experience to photograph and I hope that they got to see themselves on the front pages the next day. Their performances benefitted young dancers in San Antonio who will receive scholarships next year to study the art. 

I’ll be looking to collaborate soon with dancers in the San Antonio area for a photography series. If anyone is interested, please send me an email and we’ll explore what we can do together.

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The Cuddlers

For the past year, members of the Baptist Cuddlers have been holding babies born with drug dependencies so that the human contact can soothe and heal them. Bexar County has the highest rate of infants born in Texas with this condition, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome. 

I photographed a few of the cuddlers holding infants in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Baptist Medical Center alongside a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, Lauren Caruba, who wrote the article. I’m terrible with children, and I have the constant fear that I’ll drop them on their heads the instant one is handed to me. The way these nurses and volunteers handled these babies made me realize how strong and resilient they can be if given the chance. It’s great to cover a story where people give their time and energy to something completely outside themselves.

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Time for Texas

I got back to Texas about a month ago after finishing up a year-long Fulbright grant in India, shooting in the Azores for a month and then visiting friends and colleagues in New York for a couple weeks. When I returned finally to Texas, I ran straight out to the oil fields of the Permian Basin for Bloomberg Businessweek. They ran a story on the current shale boom happening there. It’s a topic I’ve been covering for some time so I love the chance to spend more time out there. We needed an overhead so eventually I found Kyle and this trailer-riding helicopter that I swear he built himself. I made him circle back over the same patch of grass at least five times before I thought we had it. West Texas makes for some beautiful scenery.

People always ask me, ‘What’s the most interesting place you’ve been.’ And I love to respond that people are what interest me the most. This guy is a self-described social-media preacher out in Permian and I’ll withhold his name for obvious reasons here. After he got down from “Riding the bull,” as he liked to call it, he proceeded to give me a sermon on why he moved out of Waco and kicked his drug habit to work on trucks in the oil patch. I could have stayed there all day.

Here’s how it ran in the magazine...

I’ll be in Texas spending time with family and taking assignment work until I head back to India sometime in January. I’ll also be in the editing booth as I’ve got a short doc that I’ve been wanting to cut for some time. Until next time.