IT is hard to find words to describe photographers. They work long and hard on their photos that tell a story and accompany their dreams of becoming good press photographers.
They have dreams doing good with their lives, of changing the world — at least small corners of it — as they imagine that perhaps, a hundred years from now, their stories would be heard, with their pictures capturing how men thought, felt and reacted in response to circumstances of their time.
They are different from you and me: while reporting side by side on news events coverages, our differences are deeper than rhetoric, skin shades or liver spots. You read and weep, but every picture is worth a thousand words…breaking molds, going beyond boundaries, as he rolls his craft of graphic details in one coherent whole: more vicious than the pen. The camera can turn blood into smoke, sometimes ignoring convention, as they click away always on a trail of scoops and excitement.
Today, the field has become more competitive, with a broader range of subjects: photographers have covered wars and wonders, fashion, entertainers and athletes, celebrations, disasters and discoveries. With developed skills and extraordinary versatility of not merely covering an event: combining information with emotion, even comment.
“FREEDOM: Showcasing the Creativity of Free-Spirited Filipino American Photographers” is a group photo exhibition of 10 Filipino American photographers: Joanna Allas Fojas, Robert Gamo, Rick Gavino, Vics Magsaysay, Philip Ner, Randy Ordonez, Rodolfo Samonte, Bienvenido Sibug and Benny Uy that opened on June 30 at the Filipino Cultural Center in Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown. The exhibit runs up to August 31st by the Filipino American Press Club of California.
It was a collection of photographers where their cameras relentlessly captured every unrestrained expression of journalism, partialities, determined to get photographers others failed to get — fierce and competitive, always on the trail of scoops and exclusives.
The power of their photographs, with its vivid communication of reality, is a tapestry which tells a story through images of people and events captured in the split second that it happened. Needing only a few words, the photo delivers the complete message.
Today, photographers are different than before they have more visual sophistication with photos better composed, more artful, and less like a poised tableau.
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected]
