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14 How did your orthodontist career lead to your current career as a photographer and philanthropist? It enabled me to make a change. It took me four years to get started in photography. I had built up a savings account that allowed me to get into photography. I found when I would take a break from my practice I would travel to remote areas. I did some volunteer work in Mexico with some traveling doctors, and I would also do some photography while I was there. A lot of the alumni of our school struggle with wanting to change careers in mid-life. What prompted your decision to leave orthodontics, and what advice would you give to someone in dentistry who is contemplating a career change? In my case, I had this whole side of myself that wasn’t being fulfilled. I wanted to travel and to create something that communicated. It’s something that went a long way to making me whole, the communication arts. The desire to change varies by individual. I would advise that it’s important to have something [that you’re passionate about]. In my case, I didn’t do photography while I was practicing dentistry. My renewed interest in photography came about due to the birth of our son. I took a bunch of black and white pictures after he was born — this was before the advent of those one-hour photo developers — and got access to a community college darkroom to develop them. I took a photography class and reestablished my love for photography. I wanted to do it more, and realized that I couldn’t do justice to the dental practice because I was in love with something else. If something like that grabs me, I have to make the change. I’m a one-track person. If I love something, everything else suffers. I had a practice with a partner in Benicia and Vallejo that would have suffered due to my newfound love of photography. Can you touch briefly on what changes you had to make in your lifestyle to pursue your dreams outside of dentistry? World-renowned photographer Phil Borges’ work has taken him to remote destinations all over the world, including Irian Jaya (above, at left) and Thailand.
I needed to move to a city with others already involved in the business of photography to learn it. I was living in Sonoma at the time, and San Francisco was too expensive, so we moved to Seattle, bought an inexpensive house in a lower middle-class neighborhood. I cut down on my expenses as much as possible and started a new career. How did you first get interested in photographing indigenous peoples? My interest comes from when I was a kid. I grew up in San Lorenzo, and in the summers, my mother would send me to a ranch that some relatives owned in Utah in the middle of nowhere. People living on the ranch were highly subsistent; they grew their own food and lived a life close to the land. I worked the ranch and fell in love with the lifestyle. Living close to the land was always attractive to me. It was very different from my life in California of tract developments. [In Utah] I put my energy into working on the ranch. That was certainly better than in California where I put my energy into selling firecrackers. How did you get into that? Well, I would get on my bike and ride to Chinatown in Oakland and buy fireworks and then bring them back to the neighborhood and sell them at a considerable markup.That sounds very enterprising. But when the kids got caught with them, it obviously came back to me. So it wasn’t long before I had a record. What have you learned from the indigenous peoples you photographed? How strong and tight their community is. They have to share when they farm fields, build homes and raise kids. It’s all done communally. Mothers take turns nursing each other’s children. Men put up new houses with each other. There is less emphasis on the individual and more emphasis on the community. They have time to sit and be with each other, share a joke. I remember when I was visiting Irian Jaya, there was a great-grandmother of a family who was dying. She died during the three days I was there. The extended family took turns staying in her hut, holding her, rubbing her legs, visiting her. 15
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