luto na

luto na: feast of the black nazarene 2008

In keeping up with the times I made a slideshow of my FOTBN experience. All photos were taken using my Yashica Electro GSN rangefinder film camera. Music: "Timeless" by Kate Havnevik

For a cleaner clearer video, please click HERE.

my elctro is not busted afterall. woohoo!

after ten million years, i finally was able to finish up another test roll of film just to check if my electro is working fine. turns out it is. there just had to be something wrong with the film/me loading film/ the processing of the film the last time. now, electro, on to the next photo expedition. if only i can cajole someone to shoot at the feast of the black nazarene with me.

* last photo shot by bu.

impact

My article on hunger, malnutrition and our Institute's Sagip-Bata feeding program has been published in the December issue of Impact magazine. Grab your copies at any National Bookstore outlet now. Or... you can check out the pdf version here.

The revised version is also uploaded at collectivelens.com, a site that promotes social change through photographs. Click here to view story and photos.

For those of you who can spare even a small amount this Christmas, our Institute is open for any kind of donation (cash, check, rice, milk, books etc.). Please call us at (02) 426-6001 loc 4663, email us at jcarroll@ateneo.edu for inquiries. Thanks!

projekt desap

SURFACING: A Photo Project on the Lives of the Families of Desaparecidos

A photograph is regarded as a powerful tool for communicating ideas in a way that a written or oral account cannot. A photograph is not hindered by language, nor does it expect its viewers to be educated or literate. The language that a photograph speaks can be understood by anybody. It is with the acknowledgment of this power that we deemed it appropriate to use photographs as a tool for human rights advocacy.

We intend to contribute to the continuing effort of sustaining and heightening public awareness and consciousness on the issue of enforced disappearances. By mounting exhibits and showing photo projections, we also intend to give a human face to the stories and struggles of the families of the disappeared (desaparecidos). We strongly believe that we can reach out to more people by telling their stories through images.

SURFACING, the photographers' initiative is headed by a small working group of student photographers with advice from professional photojournalists and in coordination with the Free Jonas Burgos Movement (FJBM). FJBM is a loose network of individuals seeking for the surfacing and release of Jonas Burgos, who was abducted last April, by suspected military operatives. It also speaks against human rights abuses, in particular, of other enforced disappearances of activists in the country.

This initiative is part of a growing Artists Response against the human rights abuses of the Arroyo administration. Parallel efforts are currently being undertaken by independent and mainstream filmmakers, poets, artists and musicians. All these initiatives will culminate in a Human Rights Festival on Human Rights Day, December 10.

PROJEKT DESAP can be seen at the following venues:

• The video wall of Kontra Agos: A Resistance Films Festival which runs from December 5 to 9 at Robinsons Galleria IndieSine.
• Larawanology on December 9, 3 - 7 p.m at MRT North Avenue Station.
• Human Rights Festival, December 10 at Plaza Miranda, Quiapo
  

Visit the projekt desap blog at http://www.projektdesap.blogspot.com
Screenings for Kontra Agos listed here: http://www.kontra-agos.blogspot.com

a revolutionary weekend

a revolutionay weekend

This weekend, it was not Trillanes who inspired me. It was, instead, very dilligent and passionate individuals who humbly do their job to make other lives better each day. The possiblity of checkpoints, roadblocks and being mistaken for a rebel insurgents didn't deter Lai and I (in our very you-look-like-you-didn't-take-a-bath-for-a-week look) to travel five hours to hold a meeting with a community in Sitio Kanawan, Morong, Bataan. The community was forming a people's organization and they needed community workers to help out in the initial stages of organizational development.

Kuya Borms, who has a BA and MA in philosophy and a doctorate on bureaucracy from UP, is community organizer 1. Lai, who has a BA in political science and an MA candidate of the same track in Ateneo, is community organizer 2. I am co2's friend doubling as a photographer. (Photo 1: During the commute, Kuya Borms, the real Mr. Pure Energy, couldn't stop talking about his work as a community organizer )


We arrived at the Bataan Technological Park Inc. (BTPI) which is a sprawling area of trees and grass dotted with bungalows--remnants of hospitals, houses and dormitories that were built by the former First Lady Imelda Marcos in the 1970's for Vietnamese refugees. Today it houses some residents and the Bataan Center for Innovative Science and Technology, Inc. ( BCISTI), an NGO which assists women and the Aeta community in Morong to use organic natural resources and develop food and cosmetic products. (Photo 2: Lai and Bulak. Lai works for Got Heart Foundation which partners with BCISTI in the development and marketing of their products. Bulak is the friendly housedog who seems to be well-fed indeed.)



(Photo 3: On the way to Sitio Kanawan Photo 4: Kuya Borms and Lai listen to the community president, Kuya Tony, as they explore ideas on eco-tourism and production of green charcoal-- an environment-friendly charcoal made of fallen twigs and cogon grass. Currenlty, there is only one producer of green charcoal in the country and seventy establishments that use it).

BTPI is a very peaceful place. Houses are far in between. There is an ample amount of greenery. Being up in the mountain, the weather is cool and there is a steady flow of fresh air. I imagine it to be a great haven for writers. I would definitely get some work done here. I was not surprised then to meet Kuya Uly, THE number two botanist in the Philippines, who is finishing his thesis here while teaching Aeta children about plants so they do not lose their tradition of practicing alternative medicine. The reason Kuya Uly is second and not first, I learned is that he discovered a very rare species of orchid in one of his treks up the mountain only to find out that someone else, an older scientist, discovered it only months before he did. No matter, Kuya Uly is young and I think in a few years time he will be THE number one botanist in the Philippines-- that is if he doesn't get lost for good in the mountains. The man is very keen on analyzing details but not so much on the bigger picture and there were a lot of stories about him getting lost for days in the wilderness with just salt, water and some rice as provisions.
(Photo 5: Kuya Uly looking lost. Photo 6: THE number two botanist in the Phlippines talks with THE National Scientist Dr. Luli Cruz, master and commander of BCISTI. Diptherocarp, COX1 and COX2 are only a few of the words that are staples in these geniuses' talk. They usually mention plants in scientific terms. And it's not bragging. It's normal fare.)

What keeps community work and scientific research going like a well oiled machine is good food. BCISTI's master chef, Kuya Jun is the dynamo of the kitchen. Meals are simple yet satisfying and you gotta hand it to the man. He is creative as hell. During a few rounds of kasuy wine, when Kuya Uly talked of rattan shoots in the scientific, Kuya Jun zoned out and thought of dishes that he could probably whip up with these. (Photo 8: Kuya Jun fixes breakfast: corned beef sauteed with cabbage).

Livelihood is not the sole assistance that BCISTI and Got Heart provide for the Aetas. This time, they sought the help of Ateneo Human Rights Center to conduct a legal mission to help the community understand better the laws that they can use to protect their rights. One common problem of the Aetas is lack of birth certificates and other papers that they need to be able to obtain social services from the government.
(Photo 9. AHRC lawyers and paralegals sight-seeing at the hanging bridge. This bridge connects the barangay with the Aeta community and was built when the Aetas were relocated from the BTPI compound in the 70's to give way to the Vietnamese refugees.)



(Photo 10: The view from the hanging bridge. At high noon, it is already something. I wonder how it would look like at dusk. Photo 11: That's me contemplating a hundred-meter free fall)

Lai's and my trip ended where the AHRC people's trip began--at this bridge. Like true social development workers, we had to get back to Manila Saturday afternoon to catch other Sunday work obligations. It was a very rich weekend despite the fact I hadn't even gone up the mountain and met the community yet. I definitely will return to this place, and hopefully, be able to document the lives of the Aetas and the people who help in ensuring they have a fighting chance of living humanely, unrestricted by lack of resources and social discrimination.

Social change can happen through revolution but it can also happen eventually through a total investment of the self in honest work and a dogged pursuit of social justice.

* pag naaiinip ka na, tumingala ka nalang. 09/08/2007

take a free sip

Take a SIP, it's free!



I never planned to take photography seriously. But I guess the Supreme Being has a way of setting up a hint of direction for my wayward life.

Introducing: SIP, the first ever cafe lifestyle magazine in the Philippines!

SIP is a fun magazine for the young (or young-at-heart) yet discerning member of the Filipino Cafe Lifestyle which features articles on the hottest trends in personal care, gadgets, fitness, travel, fashion, music and most importantly, youth volunteerism. Get to know your new coffee companion at any Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf branch in Mega Manila starting November 21.

I really had fun shooting for this magazine. Pero marami pa akong kakaining bigas! Hope the next issues will be bigger and better!!! Kudos to the wonderful SIP squad: Mark Milan Macanas (Editor-in-chief), Lai Tuba (Managing Editor) and Vada de la Cruz (Creative Director). Hugs!

major lightworks

light leaks galore

Something is bound to go wrong when a novice like me tries to fix melted light seals by herself, although with advice from the experts. These have been shot with my Electro gsn 35 using Kodak Max 400 expired film while Melai and I were catching up on work last Sunday. I think I need to redo the process of stuffing mousepad foam into the grooves around the camera door and pasting some into the latches all over again. Would you look at that! Sigh. Anybody knows what I must've done wrong? Help!

Susan Sontag: On Photography

These are excerpts from Susan Sontag's book On Photography. 3di's Ranulfo sent me the link and I find it very insightful and thought-provoking. I'd like to read the whole book. Okay people, it's official. I'm starting my 2007 Christmas wish list with this at number 1.

"Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great many more images around, claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads -- as an anthology of images.

To collect photographs is to collect the world. Movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out; but with still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store. In Godard's Les Carabiniers (1963), two sluggish lumpen-peasants are lured into joining the King's Army by the promise that they will be able to loot, rape, kill, or do whatever else they please to the enemy, and get rich. But the suitcase of booty that Michel-Ange and Ulysse triumphantly bring home, years later, to their wives turns out to contain only picture postcards, hundreds of them, of Monuments, Department Stores, Mammals, Wonders of Nature, Methods of Transport, Works of Art, and other classified treasures from around the globe. Godard's gag vividly parodies the equivocal magic of the photographic image., Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power. A now notorious first fall into alienation, habituating people to abstract the world into printed words, is supposed to have engendered that surplus of Faustian energy and psychic damage needed to build modern, inorganic societies. But print seems a less treacherous form of leaching out the world, of turning it into a mental object, than photographic images, which now provide most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present. What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.

Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out. They age, plagued by the usual ills of paper objects; they disappear; they become valuable, and get bought and sold; they are reproduced. Photographs, which package the world, seem to invite packaging. They are stuck in albums, framed and set on tables, tacked on walls, projected as slides. Newspapers and magazines feature them; cops alphabetize them; museums exhibit them; publishers compile them.

For many decades the book has been the most influential way of arranging (and usually miniaturizing) photographs, thereby guaranteeing them longevity, if not immortality -- photographs are fragile objects, easily torn or mislaid -- and a wider public. The photograph in a book is, obviously, the image of an image. But since it is, to begin with, a printed, smooth object, a photograph loses much less of its essential quality when reproduced in a book than a painting does. Still, the book is not a wholly satisfactory scheme for putting groups of photographs into general circulation. The sequence in which the photographs are to be looked at is proposed by the order of pages, but nothing holds readers to the recommended order or indicates the amount of time to be spent on each photograph. Chris Marker's film, Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966), a brilliantly orchestrated meditation on photographs of all sorts and themes, suggests a subtler and more rigorous way of packaging (and enlarging) still photographs. Both the order and the exact time for looking at each photograph are imposed; and there is a gain in visual legibility and emotional impact. But photographs transcribed in a film cease to be collectable objects, as they still are when served up in books.

Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it. In one version of its utility, the camera record incriminates. Starting with their use by the Paris police in the murderous roundup of Communards in June 1871, photographs became a useful tool of modern states in the surveillance and control of their increasingly mobile populations. In another version of its utility, the camera record justifies. A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture. Whatever the limitations (through amateurism) or pretensions (through artistry) of the individual photographer, a photograph -- any photograph -- seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects. Virtuosi of the noble image like Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, composing mighty, unforgettable photographs decade after decade, still want, first of all, to show something "out there," just like the Polaroid owner for whom photographs are a handy, fast form of note-taking, or the shutterbug with a Brownie who takes snapshots as souvenirs of daily life.

While a painting or a prose description can never be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency. But despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth. Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience. The immensely gifted members of the Farm Security Administration photographic project of the late 1930s (among them Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Russell Lee) would take dozens of frontal pictures of one of their sharecropper subjects until satisfied that they had gotten just the right look on film -- the precise expression on the subject's face that supported their own notions about poverty, light, dignity, texture, exploitation, and geometry. In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects. Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are. Those occasions when the taking of photographs is relatively undiscriminating, promiscuous, or self-effacing do not lessen the didacticism of the whole enterprise. This very passivity -- and ubiquity -- of the photographic record is photography's "message," its aggression.

Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots). There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera. This is as evident in the 1840s and 1850s, photography's glorious first two decades, as in all the succeeding decades, during which technology made possible an ever increasing spread of that mentality which looks at the world as a set of potential photographs. Even for such early masters as David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron who used the camera as a means of getting painterly images, the point of taking photographs was a vast departure from the aims of painters. From its start, photography implied the capture of the largest possible number of subjects. Painting never had so imperial a scope. The subsequent industrialization of camera technology only carried out a promise inherent in photography from its very beginning: to democratize all experiences by translating them into images.

That age when taking photographs required a cumbersome and expensive contraption -- the toy of the clever, the wealthy, and the obsessed -- seems remote indeed from the era of sleek pocket cameras that invite anyone to take pictures. The first cameras, made in France and England in the early 1840s, had only inventors and buffs to operate them. Since there were then no professional photographers, there could not be amateurs either, and taking photographs had no clear social use; it was a gratuitous, that is, an artistic activity, though with few pretensions to being an art. It was only with its industrialization that photography came into its own as art. As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art."

camphoning

oooooh, i completely forgot i had these in my phone isis' camera album. the anilao sunset was gorgeous and it was just so hilarious to see some twelve photographers either gawking miserably or trying desperately to capture it right using little camera phones.


it was such a pain to have left all our cameras at the resthouse save from the olympus underwater camera we were testing. apparently, rules are rules. because we were at an olympus sponsored event, only olympus cameras were allowed. good thing i had isis with me. she actually did a good job, don't you think?


*photos taken with my SE k550i

in a flux

it seems like i'm in a flux. too many things happening all at once can get very annoying. but, because my tolerance level is high, i'm still alive and sane. after the booklaunch, and shooting for projekt desap and sipmag in between preparations, after accompanying lolo jack to receive his special citation on a cmma lifetime achievement award and going through two hours of edsa traffic later, after learning that 50% of our office staff would have to be retrenched in march 2008, me included, after all that in a span of a week, i went to anilao batangas with 3di to do some test shots with the new olympus 790 sw underwater camera. my photos and my personal take of the camera are -->here<--

but if you're gonna ask me which of the photos i took in anilao explains the whole experience best, it would be this:



anilao was supposed to be an escape. but it turned out to be me being forced to face things that were long set aside by self-imposed iteneraries.

because i'm feeling nostalgic, i'm reposting this article. can't find it anywhere in cyberspace anymore... more than a year after i wrote this, all i can say is that i'm now experiencing joys and pains, i'm convinced, that can only come from loving. :)

Waiting
(first published at the Youngblood section p. A11 of Philippine Daily Inquirer 03/11/06)

Boredom characterizes the world of young people today. “Bored” is used in everyday parlance to denote a feeling of lack of purpose. When a person is bored, it probably means that she is in a withdrawn and lethargic mood, trying to let the day pass by hoping the next will be different. I am usually very bored.

I work in a research and advocacy institute. And although the work is good, I often find myself wondering what I can do to make my life more exciting. Lately I have gotten myself into the habit of joining some friends in a nightcap after work just to fill my days. But that tends to sap away energy not to mention funds from my already sorry excuse of a savings account.

So I dabble in all sorts of fields, trying to find something that will strike a chord in me. I like music, particularly rock music, but not enough to work at a recording studio, not enough for me to learn how to play a guitar or any musical instrument, not even enough to own an iPod or even original CDs which are very expensive especially now that pirated ones abound.

I like reading but not enough to join book clubs, not even enough to read a book everyday.

I like to write but not enough to enroll in writing classes, not enough to closely observe real people for fear of getting in too deep into their psyche and be drowned by these.

Like reading, I like writing but not enough to even write everyday.

I like to cook and in fact, have been praised by family members because of nifty tricks with edible material. However, I am not driven enough to want to complete a short course in it, to cook more frequently for my housemates, not even enough to stop buying fast food.

I like tennis, badminton, kickboxing, teakwondo and judo but not enough to want to be really good at them.

My boredom puts me in a quandary and it gets me into thinking whether I am in the right job, the right set of friends, the right locale, even the right country. I admire my boss who seems to be really into his work and who seems to enjoy life even in the very ripe age of 82. I wonder how people who have become experts at their fields come to be who they are. Were they gripped by an undeniable enchantment to their particular vocations?

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, the former Superior General of the Society of Jesus wrote, “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

I guess this is what I am waiting for, to be smitten by something that I won’t be able to say no to. Yes, I am waiting to be able to fall in love.

But then, isn’t this just a very deterministic excuse to my inaction? What happens if I never fall in love? Then that would mean that my life will be like an absurdist play. I will be waiting for my Godot, that something that will never come. Everyday will only be a pointless routine with only accidents and disasters to mar an otherwise smooth progression of time.

Maybe I only have to choose. Many people, afterall, were thrust into jobs which were not their choosing and yet they excelled in these because they chose to. Perhaps my refusal to finally make a choice only shows my cowardice. Maybe, like finding a lifelong partner, I only have to settle with something that is always there and always good to me but which I am not always good at. I only have to grit my teeth and try to be better.

Now that I get on to thinking about this, maybe falling in love with a certain vocation, or even in general, is overrated. What’s more important is to love. Both are not the same thing. To fall in love involves a very heady feeling that can taper off as time flies and certain chemicals like phenylethylamine and endorphins produced in the body wear off. Loving, on the other hand involves consistent actions. It is because of love, not falling in love, that people gain purpose in life. It is in love, not falling on love, that makes things happen. Some would point out that falling in love is a requisite for loving. But this is like a chicken or egg question. It can be the other way around too.

I am nearly 23 years old. While some of my colleagues and friends are either building careers or families, I am still waiting to fall in love. Maybe it’s time I get a move on and be of more use to this world. Maybe I should just love.


Diana Jean V. Moraleda, 22, works as a research assistant at the Institute on Church and Social Issues

surfacing


October is a busy month for me. Aside from arranging the launch of the popdev monograph, I've recently joined a photo workshop slash project to document the lives of families of desaparecidos or those who have been victims of enforced disappearances. We're only halfway through but it's been two great weeks. I'm apprehensive but also very excited to do the actual shoot. Hope I'll be able to help by doing the job well. More posts about it in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, here are photos of projekt desap volunteers (workshop teachers and students)goofing around during breaktime.




More workshop photos by hiraya here.

the great divide


*cebu city, 9:00 ng umaga.

more than passion

more than passion

"In the beginning of desire one is consumed with wanting to be aflame with that desire. When one becomes inflamed however, one just becomes extinguished. The trick is to find out what desire and sex can lead you to apart from just flame and passion."

- Rica-Bolipata Santos
Love, desire, children, etc. Reflections of a Young Wife, Milflores Publishing 2005

My Intersect July-August issue article on sex, the youth, marriage and responsible parenthood has been chosen to be uploaded at teenfad.com. This is my second article to be re-published here. Read full article.