Redefining Home on the Virginia Peninsula

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Matt Eich was raised in the Tidewater area of the Virginia Peninsula, a series of seven cities and smaller shore communities separated by water yet connected by bridges, tunnels and the presence of many large United States military ases.

The military dominates the economy and the politics tend to be conservative. Traces of over 400 years of history can be seen in the remnants of the Jamestown settlement and in the new old houses of Colonial Williamsburg.

But, truth be told, Mr. Eich never felt particularly connected to the area growing up. He experienced it as a never-ending series of strip malls punctuated by a few places of profound natural beauty.

“Outside of some rural areas and a few pockets of the cities, my perception was it that it was pretty lackluster place,” Mr. Eich said.

After finishing his degree in photojournalism at Ohio University, Mr. Eich returned to home in 2009, not so much out of a yearning for the place but because of practical concerns. At 22, Mr. Eich was married with a 1-year-old daughter, and his parents and all three of his siblings were in the area.

Matt Eich The photographer’s daughter, Meira Eich, 4 months old, nuzzled with her mother, Melissa Eich, 25.

Living there would allow him to pursue his peripatetic career as a photographer while his wife, Melissa, studied for a graduate degree in speech pathology. This year they had another daughter.

So far, Mr. Eich’s career has gone well. He became known as a member of the Luceo collective â€" which he left last summer â€" and has been fairly successful in landing editorial assignments and winning grants to fund his projects.

He pursued a long-term project in Greenwood, Miss., “Sin and Salvation in Baptist Town,” raising money for it on the photography crowd financing platform, emphas.is.

He is now using emphasis again to pay for an exhibition of “The Seven Cities” at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach this fall.

The exhibit will showcase his documentary photographs of the Tidewater community and its military influence, interspersed with photos of his family. “I’m trying to put my family’s narratives into the context of the community,” Mr. Eich said. “I’m also photographing my wife and daughters and parents and siblings and friends we grew up with.”

As he works on decoding the area in which he grew up and defining his own relationship to home, he is also trying to determine whether there is a place in photography for someone to do personal work, have a career and support a family.

Rapid changes in the photography industry have made it impossible to predict if one year of editorial assignment bounty will be followed by another of fam! ine. It i! s hard to plan a career. Like many photographers, Mr. Eich continually struggles to come up with reliable models to tame the turbulent economic forces.

Matt Eich A wounded veteran and a returning sailor shared a kiss at the final homecoming of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

In planning “The Seven Cities,” he endeavored to put together a meaningful project that would keep him near his wife and daughters. He carefully drew up a budget of $70,000 to cover printing and framing, pay a collaborator to gather audio, produce sound installations and build an interactive Web site where community members could upload their stories. It would also pay Mr. Eich a modest amount.

The result so far

“I haven’t come up with a cent for any of it,” he said.

Mr. Eich di receive a $3000 Short Grant from the National Press Photographers Association, which paid for two weeks of shooting last year. This July, he will participate in a Lightwork artist residency in Syracuse, where he will print the work and edit with the photo editors Mike Davis and Deb Davis.

The question facing him and other young photographers in these unpredictable times is how to make pursuing personal work financially sustainable. As he seeks to find solutions he admits, “I don’t have an answer to that.”

“I can tell you that every time I go to a photo conference some National Geographic guy is there saying he’s never struggled to get assignments â€" they just fell into his lap,” Mr. Eich said. “Well, that sounds like a lovely world to live in, but that’s not the world I’ve been given, so I have to figure out how to work with what I got.”

Matt Eich A backyard in Portsmouth, Va.

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