On Mapping and Imaginings

11 articles about photography in the Philippines. Welcome to Insights: Issue One, a special edition of Photography Chismis PH.

Aug 19, 2023

Photography’s Many Realities: In defense of Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry was introduced to me by my good friend, Hossein Farmani, who owns the Lucie Awards and is McCurry’s closest friend. The Lucie

Aug 19, 2023

Authorship and Representation

Children flash their bright smiles atop debris, workers wiggle their hips whilst carrying shovels and brooms, dancers sway and break dance i

Aug 19, 2023

Dean Worcester's Fantasy Islands: Photography, Film & the Colonial Philippines by Mark Rice (review)

Before Dean Worcester’s Fantasy Islands was published, the only book-length study of American colonial photographs of the Philippines was Be

Aug 19, 2023

Fotomoto: A View from Inside

FotomotoPH is a photography collective that organizes the largest traveling exhibition of Philippine photography to date. The group’s object

Aug 19, 2023

NOT VISUAL NOISE: Philippine Photography In A Media Saturated World

There’s so much visual noise that it’s hard to make work that is distinctive and focuses the attention of the crowd in a sustained way.1 ~ S

Aug 18, 2023

Facciamo una bella foto!

In 2008, the Asian economy took a downturn with the global financial crisis. Photographic jobs and projects in Manila were the first to disa

Aug 18, 2023

On the Philosophy of Photography

“Finally,” I told my class on the first day of a new course I just launched this semester, “finally, after many years of thinking about it,

Aug 18, 2023

Kitsch Commodification vis-à-vis Poverty in Photography

Imagine finding yourself at a crossroads: having entered a prestigious photography competition with the potential to win up to PHP 100,000,

Aug 18, 2023

Batok, Beauty, and Branding

In April 2023, Vogue Philippines published their seventh issue, which, so to say, made a splash around the world. On the cover was the kind

Aug 5, 2023

Dispersed by Torrent, Gathered by Image

A disconsolate father recalls a searing time: his son draws his attention to a picture he has just sketched out. Seemingly arising, or stemm

Aug 5, 2023

Bencab on the 5 Photographers

The first one man show which featured photography as art was by Romy Vitug. That was in my gallery then, in Indigo, in 1967. There were a lo