Postcards from Fremont

At the age of 18 I spent a year as an exchange student in America, and being in this country was my first exposure to a culture outside my native Thailand. I landed in the charming Michigan town of Fremont, named for the famous explorer of America’s West. I found its citizens, including my host family, to be kind and accepting, and my time there was one of the best experiences of my young life. It shaped not only the way I see American society, but also my own identity. This formative experience was why, when I returned to the U.S. 16 years later to earn my master’s degree in photography, I set out to document Fremont to learn how much it still corresponded to my memories. I made several trips there, spending several days each time, photographing a combination of landscape, architecture, portrait, and still life subjects. All of these had a connection with my previous experience. Some were as straightforward as the house I lived in and the school I attended. Others were less obvious and more particular, such as a tree I had photographed and won an art prize for the print, and a portrait of my photography teacher, who was a great influence on me and my future profession. Coming from Thailand, where new development is constantly changing neighborhoods and the landscape, I was surprised at how much Fremont had remained the same, and how much it matched my memories. I know that one town doesn’t represent everything about America, which has also seen great change in the years since my first visit. Yet the constancy of Fremont turned my project into a near visualization of my memories. This reinforced, in turn, just how formative that experience had been for me. My time in Fremont not only taught me that it’s possible to feel at home in another culture, but also whet my appetite to see more of the world. In sharing these feelings, and exploring the relationship between past experience and memory, I want to invite viewers to think about how their own experience, especially in new and challenging places, has influenced who they are.