A series of photographs documenting the wetland park along Metro Manila. Initially used as documentation and reference for my undergraduate thesis, below is an excerpt. Some photographs may contain graphic images of deceased animals.

Painters and photographers alike throughout history have challenged notions of beauty. Much like figurative painters that expand on social realities by way of canvas, photographers are able to capture a discreet reality by way of flash. In On Photography, a book by Susan Sontag, she further expounds on the medium of photography as another form of seeing that is hidden in everyday life through the documentation of these ‘miniature realities’ that we call photographs. To Walter Benjamin, photography is a collective product between the camera and the artist. It is the result of efforts and judgement of the man behind the camera that allows him to create new modes of perception.

I see my images as objects of dispossession; taking bodies of nature that are found in the everyday into my own inventory. These images are defined by our relationship to native and constructed environments and its conflicts, which I define as ‘urbanism’ or the study of how people interact with their built environments. My documentations of urbanisms are found within the context of the vernacular of Metro Manila.

My affinity to photography is a desire for repossession. Sontag notes that the compulsion of photography is a way to turn an experience into a way of seeing. In fashioning objects made from the imprints of photography, the very act of translating image onto paper is a way for me to possess and materialize an experience into tangible reality. According to Sontag, those insecure of the past are the most fervent picture takers, often photographing as a way to take ownership of places, objects, and people. Once photographed and materialized, the experience of seeing turns into an object of possession.