Images of Strife and Struggle:
Photographs as History and Critique
When photojournalists transcend their occupation of using the lens just to
observe or break the news and dare step into the workers’ front lines,
their images can rouse the viewer out of detached contemplation.
By Lisa C. Ito
Bulatlat
Anti-riot police, with
tanks behind them, block part of 13,000 workers marching from the
Bataan Export Processing Zone to Samal, 1982. |
The power of
photojournalism lies in its ability to capture the struggles of its
milieu: the narrative of tragedies and triumphs of a people, the
chronicles of martyrdom and real newsmakers – all stark reminders of
moving social realities.
Photography may
glamorize and market people or products for profit, to beautify the ugly
or to isolate what is common. But the medium has the potential to document
social realism that today’s media technocrats and patrons of culture would
rather forget, conceal, or completely ignore.
|
The latter is
exactly what two ongoing photography exhibitions at the University of the
Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City do. The first exhibition, Mga
Larawang Pilak: Pagdiriwang sa ika-25 na Anibersaryo ng Kilusang Mayo Uno
(Images in Silver: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the
May 1st Movement), runs from Oct. 2 to Nov. 27 at The Edge
Gallery, Vargas Museum. The second, entitled Sharper than the Sword,
an exhibition by young photojournalists Jes Aznar and Rafael Lerma, has
been on exhibit at the College of Mass Communication in cooperation with
the UP Journalism Club this month.
Photographs as history
Mga Larawang Pilak
is
offered in celebration of the KMU’s silver anniversary as one of the
largest labor centers of the working class in Philippine history. Images
of the movement and its struggles are sourced from photo archives of the
KMU and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance), Rene
Dilan of Manila Times,
Leo Esclanda of Pinoy
Weekly,
and freelance photographers Jun Resureccion and Peter Alvarez.
SEIZED: KMU chairman Crispin
Beltran and another activist are cornered by anti-riot police during the
dispersal of a picket at the Manila Hotel, 1999. (Photo by Luis Liwanag)
|
Departing from the
usual historical timeline used in most photo exhibits, the photographs in
Mga Larawang Pilak are shown according to themes and concepts that
capture the KMU’s historical struggle, as illustrated in Protesta
(Protest), Sulong (Advance or Onward). Bayani (Hero/ine).
Martir (Martyr), Kristo (Christ), Pagtatag (Founding, or
Strengthening, depending on its use), Welga (Strike) and Mayo
Uno (May 1).
This device draws
the viewer's attention not on the photographs as objects to reflect on
per se but on the
themes represented and the messages behind the images. Somehow, despite
limitations of space and resources, the photographs embody the dynamism,
pains and complexities that have characterized the workers’ movement for a
quarter of a century now.
|
The photographers
are anonymous - perhaps to underscore the fact that they are after all
part of a larger movement. On the other hand, a more detailed historical
time line may be useful for context-building among audiences, particularly
for the youths who were not yet even born when the KMU was founded and who
were probably still in elementary school when EDSA 2 came around.
While the KMU
traces its historical roots to the revolutionary Katipunan in 1892 and the
anti-imperialist Union Obrera Democratica in 1902, its formal origins are
chronicled in the exhibition. The photograph Pagtatag ng KMU
depicts a front-seat scene at its founding ceremonies on May 1, 1980,
before an audience of 30,000 at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.
Another photograph documents a scene shown in the ceremonies where Ka
Amado Hernandez, Ka Bert Olalia, and Jose Maria Sison share space in the
picture plane.
In the exhibition,
the semiotic significance of the theme Pagtatag takes on a double
meaning. Pagtatag denotes not only the founding of the KMU but its
historical “strengthening” as well amid the dictatorial repression and the
rift in the Philippine workers movement that the KMU faced at that time.
|
This advancement in
each decade of struggle is also displayed in the theme Sulong with
vivid photographs exemplifying how the KMU weathered every obstacle and
trial through militancy and solidarity. This spirit breathes life into the
struggle and keeps the fire burning - a metaphor captured in one image
where urban poor woman leader and Anakpawis (toiling masses) Party List
Vice-President Carmen “Nanay Mameng” Deunida bends over to lit a candle,
while a placard with the slogan “Imperyalismo, Ibagsak!” (Down with
Imperialism) is strategically positioned behind her.
|
KMU founder Felixberto Olalia,
Sr. (with necktie), poet-labor leader Amado V. Hernandez (with sampaguita
wreath), and then youth leader Jose Maria Sison (seated, second from
right) during a gathering of the Movement for the Advancement of
Nationalism (MAN) sometime in the 1960s
|
The collective
strength and resistance of the Filipino working class against their
exploiters is dramatized in the traditional
Mayo Uno (May 1)
rallies. The efforts of cultural workers - artists, writers, actors,
singers, photographers - to pay tribute to the working class are
documented in the images of the May 1, 2005 rally at the Liwasang
Bonifacio (or Bonifacio Freedom Park). This is particularly illustrated in
the Mayo Uno 2005 Cultural Presentation,
where the painted tableau of the workers united against the enemy (a
two-dimensional street mural serving as the backdrop of the entire
program) merges with an actual performance. This representation of the
action onstage becomes a site where the painted image and live performance
intersect.
In the context of
continuing local elite and foreign domination, Protesta (Protest)
has generally characterized the KMU’s mass actions for societal change.
The exhibit features several historical issues and campaigns for which the
workers have taken to the barricades and front lines: Sahod Itaas,
the protracted struggle for a P125 across-the-board nationwide wage
increase since 1999, the opposition to deregulation-borne oil price
increases, and the struggle for the removal of the Marcos dictatorship and
EDSA 2 protests against former President Joseph Estrada.
The welga
(workers’ strike), as the exhibition implies, historically remains the
workers’ most potent defense against capitalist exploitation. This
collective resistance that is encapsulated in a 1902 photo is carried up
to the present in the kilusang welga (strike movement) that
highlights contemporary Philippine politics. One photograph testifies how
in 1982 army tanks were used to block columns of 13,000 workers marching
from the Bataan Export Processing Zone (BEPZ) to Samal in Bataan.
Photographs as
critique
The long struggle
for labor rights has also yielded its own breed of Bayani (Hero/ine).
The photograph captioned Si Ka Bert at Ka Bel, Katabi ang Opisyal ng
militar na umaresto sa kanila (Comrades Bert and Bel, beside military
official who arrested them) is a grim reminder of how, on the eve of the
Marcos state visit to the U.S., successive raids on offices of progressive
organizations ended in the arrest of labor union leaders, including
Felixberto Olalia and former KMU Chairperson Crispin Beltran.
SM salesladies join co-workers
in defending the picketline, sometime in the 1990s
|
Hanggang sa
Huling Hantungan ni Ka Lando Olalia,
reminds us of how Ka Bert Olalia’s son and his companion Leonor Ay-ay were
abducted by military agents in November 1986, then tortured before they
were brutally killed. Olalia’s and Leonor’s death did not diminish the
valour that they showed while alive, as attested to by the tears and rage
of more than half a million mourners at their funeral march.
As martial law-like
political suppression of progressive workers continues up to the present,
Martir (martyr) has become common word in the movement's
vocabulary. The photograph taken at the Hacienda Luisita on Nov. 16, 2004
shows people carrying the blood-soaked and barely-conscious farmworker and
Hacienda Luisita Incorporated “stockholder” Jesus Laza, one of the seven
strikers killed that day.
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For a country where
Catholicism remains a dominant cultural influence, the sufferings of
Christ are often transposed as metaphors for the oppression and hardship
borne by workers. Kristo represents photographs of a worker during
the Artex Strike in 1984 in the image of Christ's Calvary. Shod of his
slippers and shirt in the dispersal, he struggles on the ground while
being whacked by truncheon-wielding police with shields and helmets. The
photographs are also composed in the shape of a cross, perhaps signifying
the “Cross” that the worker-Christs have to bear in order to eventually
liberate the masses from their chains.
Finally,
Mga Larawang Pilak
pays tribute to Diosdado “Ka Fort” Fortuna, Nestle union President and
Anakpawis Southern Tagalog Chairperson, who was murdered while on his way
home last Sept. 22, a day after the Ayala rally in protest against the
creeping martial law. Bayani Ka Pangulong
Fort features twin
images of Ka Fort in a single photograph while still alive; one image
shows him carrying a huge streamer demanding a stop to the political
killings.
Sharper than the
Sword
Meanwhile, more contemporary images of dissent can be found at the other
end of the university’s Academic Oval at the College of Mass
Communication, in the two-person exhibition entitled Sharper than the
Sword, by Aznar and Lerma. The exhibit was previously hung at the Oarhouse
along Adriatico Street in Malate last month.
As with the
photographs in Mga
Larawang Pilak, the images in
Sharper
are the products of Aznar and Lerma's immersions and
excursions to the picket lines of the General Milling Corporation (GMC)
and the Hacienda Luisita, Incorporated (HLI) in Tarlac, respectively. The
images juxtapose scenes from two harsh dispersals in separate sites,
happening within a month or so of each other (the HLI photos were taken in
November 2004, the GMC photos in October 2004).
Aznar ventures into
the picket lines of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, the largest sugar mill in
Luzon, and records visual vignettes from day-to-day scenes of thousands of
striking farmworkers at the picket lines. While the Luisita massacre
brought the lens of TV cameras to the site of the strike for a time, Aznar
goes one step further by documenting the strike from the intimate point of
view of one interacting with the workers, one who they will gladly let in
their ranks and share their stories of hope amidst hardship and death
threats.
On the other hand,
Lerma's images maximize the impact of black-and-white photography; stark
contrasts between black and white tend to capture the raw tension and air
of confrontation with more drama and depth.
The images are also
provocative in their ability to capture the violence unleashed by state
and capitalist forces at the picket lines. In such instances, the camera
becomes a potent weapon in documenting truth amidst deception, attesting
to the rising fascism against workers that rears its head every now and
then.
“Incomplete”
As with all visual
histories, the images documented in
Mga Larawang Pilak and
Sharper than the Sword
are moving and significant but incomplete. “Incomplete” because no amount
of hours spent contemplating these representations - moving and excellent
as they are - can ever fully approximate the sights, sounds, smells, and
sentiments of being immersed in the struggle of society's basic sectors.
The paradox of the
photographs' silence is that they may draw the viewer farther from the
reality even as they document the scene – the rancid smell of blood and
gunpowder, the crunch of truncheons on bone and the thousands-strong
chants and slogans, the dust, heat, and fatigue. The viewer however cannot
resist the challenge to go beyond the images that the cameras capture and
to experience them in real life.
When
photojournalists transcend their occupation of using the lens just to
observe or break the news and dare step into the workers’ front lines,
their images can rouse the viewer out of detached contemplation.
Bulatlat
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