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Living on an island, one gets used to looking at water, so it takes something very dramatic to make you stop and see, really see, what you’re looking at. I think the water is at its most dramatic when it is wed to the sky at sunrise, sunset, and during storms. Storms over water are like storms over the prairie. There is all this lowering sky that is given dimension by its contact with the horizon, a straight line broken only, if at all, by built edifices or trees. Storms over the Gulf are different from storms over the Bay only because the horizon is seldom ever broken by anything.

I love magnolias. If any tree symbolizes the south to me, it is the magnolia. I can say this even though we have filled 19 trash bags so far this year with thick dark leaves and leathery flower petals that seem to never stop littering the ground. And there are still more to come, not to mention the scores of seed pods that will follow in a few months. But when I step outside in the still humid air of a Galveston morning, the scent of the tree’s flowers greets me for weeks during the early summer. Their short life span, a day or maybe two, means that a photographer has to hurry to catch an image before the pristine white petals starts their rapid, but still elegant, decay.

I live at the bottom of the United States. If you were to pick up the country and shake it gently, most of its inhabitants would slide south and plunk down in one of Texas barrier islands. A few on the East Coast would tumble into Florida and many along the Pacific would find themselves in southern California, but Galveston Island would come close to sinking as its population explodes from thousands into millions. And if you were to shift through the piles of people who land on the island, pick out all who don’t have at least one very colorful story to tell about members of their immediate family, and throw them back to their previous abode, what you have left would probably fit in just fine. While most of the people in Galveston are normal, hard-working, friendly folk, there are a disproportionate number of characters here . Hardly a year passes that we can’t engender one or two stories that are worthy of the National Inquirer.

In addition, there have been (and still are) oodles of millionaires who have called the Island home (or perhaps second home). A careful drive through selected city streets reveals block after block of Victorian and Queen Anne homes and it would take more than a day to tour all of the Galveston Historical Foundation mansions. However, a turn north when you should have turned south exposes the soft underbelly of the town, streets full of dilapidated small homes, overgrown vacant lots, and other remnants of long term poverty and deep despair.  As with New Orleans, the big brother that Galvestonians strive to emulate, both the charm and the shame of the island is in its decadence, its ability to close its eyes to the tawdry and broken by keeping its focus on the past and its money in the present.

Only 32.miles long and two and a half miles at its widest point, Galveston Island provides visitors with a microcosmic view of life along the Gulf Coast. As with so many coastal areas, the island is being confronted with struggles between preservationists and conservationists on one hand and developers and business interests on the other. The history of the island is shaped by the devastating 1900 hurricane that destroyed much of the commercial infrastructure of Galveston City, along with the majority of its buildings and 6,000 of its citizens. Even today the city’s residents speak in hushed tones about the great storm of over a century ago and the island’s contours continue to be shaped by tides and weather.  

Since moving to Galveston in 1987, I have been slowly captivated by the vicissitudes of living on the island. Located on a major migratory flyway, the variety of bird life is extensive but stays are often fleeting. The botanical life is rich in the short weeks of spring but many plants melt in the humid summer heat or are overrun by an abundance of hungry insects. The southern edge of the island is defined by the expansive vista of the Gulf, an eight mile sea wall, hotels and restaurants, subdivisions on stilts, rapidly diminishing ranches and wetlands, and the open lands of our state park. The northern edge, separated from the mainland by Galveston Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway, is dominated by industry, the port, and the teeming avian and aquatic life of the bay itself. There is such variety in so little a space.

My photographic images tend to ignore the post card views of the island’s historical buildings, the sunbathers along the strips of beach, and the tourist attractions. I have chosen to focus on the things that I associate with living here, not visiting. The focus is on the ephemeral nature of island life.

Pat Jakobi