It’s hard to stop working on a photo project. Sometimes there is relief that the undertaking is done. Sometimes there is longing for more. Sometimes, this time, I don’t think there will ever be a complete ending. While my trips will never be frequent again, I don’t think I’ll ever come to a point where I never want to return to Sun City.

My photo essay, Topophilia, explores ties to place and I feel ties to Sun City. I love the energy there. I love the light. I love how I am welcomed by strangers every visit, even though I couldn’t be more clearly an outsider. In fact, I’m not even allowed to live in Sun City unless someone over 55 adopts me and welcomes me into their home as a caregiver or a wife. I am not crossing my fingers that either of those will happen, so these brief visits back to my unusual home away from home will have to quell my homesickness for Sun City when absence is prolonged.

Working on a photo project, meeting the people and bonding with them, editing images for hours and trying to arrange the right photos into a puzzle that tell the story becomes a relationship. Some people can be done with the relationship of a photo essay and have closure. I took a long break from Sun City because I’d seen suffering the previous trip (the death of a man and then the funeral of another) and it really upset me because I was just so focused on the illusion of youth. Yet, since I’ve been back once more, I just don’t think Sun City and I will ever completely let each other go.

My latest trip there this December 2011 was one of my most brief. I hadn’t been since exactly the same week the year before for TIME Magazine. Oddly enough, my first visit there was the same exact week two years before this one, as well. This trip I stayed with a new couple–Larry and Jeannie. I’d met Larry one year before at a funeral. It was a very brief encounter, but I’d given him my card. He emailed me asking to get photos from his loved one’s celebration of life (you might recall the images of balloons being released) and he also offered to host me if I ever returned. He later told me he tells people that often but I was the only one who ever took him up on his generous offer. He offered in February, and November 21st I emailed him and told him I’d been thinking about heading back and I asked him if the offer still stood. His response was so enthusiastic I knew it was time to return:

Jeannie and I would love to have you stay with us in Sun City.  We think you would fit in well with all the activities and fit in with us as we know you would not expect “fancy”. We are very informal.  We have the spare bedroom and no one will be visiting at that time.  I know you are just “rolling the idea around” right now but our opinion is “do it”.

I never quite know how I will fit in in a home in Sun City. I’d previously stayed with Bill and Lori, who I was thrilled to see again and catch up with on this visit. Larry and Jeannie took me out to dinner the first night, then we went grocery shopping for an upcoming party they were throwing. Immediately I felt like we were family. Larry pointed out all the memorabilia in their home and called Jeannie a memory hoarder. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a more beautiful condition and I share her sentiment of trying to hold on to the past, that is why I take photos.

A lot of my previous visits to Sun City have involved me dropping in on activities the majority of the time and there is less time to bond with people beyond an initial conversation because I’m usually off to the next activity. This trip was very laid back, which was nice because I got to spend a lot of time with both Larry and Jeannie. Larry took me to his pickle ball club practice on a chilly Sun City morning. Jeannie scraped the frost off my rental car window before I headed to the courts where her husband was playing. I wandered to another court, where his club-mates who he’d introduced me to were playing. After I photographed a two matches, there was a break, and two people insisted they teach me how to play a game. This is a big example of how Sun City has changed who I am and who I am becoming as a photographer. If I was in Sun City on a quick assignment, I would have definitely said no. I’ve always been taught to keep a division between my subjects and I — never take gifts or food, always be objective. However, in Sun City, I become a retiree for parts of my trips. I sleep in guest rooms, I go to the parties, I’m introduced to friends. I am not only witness to the life around me, I become a part of it. A former version of myself would be nervous about taking photos of Larry and Jeannie eating breakfast, with my plate sitting between them, but I’m becoming less and less concerned with being a part of what I document. I cannot ignore the fact that people react a certain way when I am present with my camera, they cannot ignore me. I’ve only recently started to embrace this more, however. So, despite the fact that I’ve never played team sports and am not much of an athlete, as the sun climbed in the early morning of Sun City, I learned pickle ball with three retirees. I absolutely loved it. They were patient with me and encouraging and it made even more sense to me why the residents of Sun City love their home so and why they chose it as a home to the end of their days.

When I first got to Sun City Wednesday afternoon, I didn’t know where to head first so I went to the Welcome Center to pick up a pass that lets me into the recreation centers. I noticed people walking toward one of the social halls and saw a flyer on a community board that announced The Bell Tea Dance that was starting. I’d photographed a dance there two years before (the image of the matching couple holding hands standing against a wall was shot there) and decided to re-try a shot through the outdoor window that I’d tried before but hadn’t gotten the frame I wanted. So I’m shooting through the window as dancers waltz, tango, samba, foxtrot and polka by and I’m trying to get the palm trees reflecting and people’s silhouetted bodies not intersecting when a man comes to the door and motions for me to come in. I thank him and tell him I will shortly but am trying to get an image through the window first. Then, a few minutes later, another man invites me in. Then another. I have to be honest, when I’m not comfortable, I take images from a distance and move in closer as my comfort (and the subject’s comfort) increases. So these people, not asking or caring who I was or what I was doing, inviting me and urging me inside for a dance was a perfect welcome back into Sun City, after a year of absence.

The next two days, I also photographed a yoga class and a jazz class. I photographed the annual Sun City Holiday Celebration that I’d photographed the two previous year (The Aqua Suns in their antlers performing in the pool at the Lakeview Recreation Center, The Amazing Duck Race for charity, the Christmas boat parade). I photographed Larry paddle boarding and Jeannie picking a neighbor’s tangerines for fresh juice. The last thing I photographed was a party Larry and Jeannie hosted in their home. After the lit boat parade, which Larry decorated his giant swan paddle boat for, the couple hosted a baked potato dinner (I’d helped Jeannie roll the baked potatoes in tin foil and fold napkins for the party that morning). One of their friends, who I’d learned pickle ball from the day before was there and she told me she was so intrigued with my intrigue for Sun City. Why was this woman in her 20s so interested in retirees that she kept coming back to spend time with them, she wondered. Why not, I said. I’m not sure I will ever retire and this place and its people has drawn me in. I wonder what comical photo essay could be done photographing me on my adventures through retirement.

Then, after dinner, Larry turned on the Wii console and his dozen guests took turns skiing and headbutting soccer balls. All of us were laughing so hard we were crying. Larry jokingly threatened that I couldn’t sleep in the guest room that night if I didn’t play every game with them, and I was admittedly one of the worst. I honestly can say I hadn’t had that much fun in a long time.

You can see more images from this trip in another post here.

You can see the photo essay Sun City: Life After Life here.

It's hard to stop working on a photo project. Sometimes there is relief that the undertaking is done. Sometimes there is longing for more. Sometimes, this time, I don't think there will ever be a complete ending. While my trips will never be frequent again, I don't think I'll ever come to a point ...