This story was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 36, October 16-22, 2005

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

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 25^th Anniversary of the May 1^st 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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