Kasalogan: The Rivers in Us

(The exhibit from students of Department of Media Studies was caught between the Tercentenary celebration of the devotion to our Lady of Peñafrancia and the semester break that followed it. This article pays tribute to the young artists and saw publication on the Art Page of Business Mirror where the author is the resident Art And Media Critic.)

In Ateneo de Naga University, the student photographers of the Department of Media Studies have photographed the Bikol River, or at least its vanishing, dying tributary called the Naga River. In the process, they are discovering what the great photographer of monumental landscapes, Ansel Adams, thinks of photograph as "that instrument of love and revelation."

For a generation identified with frenzied lifestyle and short attention span, the young photographers in the exhibit called "Kasalogan" (literally "Of Rivers): A Tribute in Black-and-White to the Bikol River"  manage to slow down a bit. The photographs are studies in languid rhythm, as if the photographers are pondering about the phenomenon they were assigned to document.

Has the body of water, polluted beyond polluted, influenced the senses of the photographers?

We can only assume what was happening in them and with them when these students went on a fieldwork. Their mentor, Prof. Toots Rugeria of Media Studies, shared how the students had to cope with the instruction to shoot in black-and-white. Initially, the students were asked to take a walk along the river and look for subjects. Rugeria noted that, in the succeeding meetings, the students complained about the river being "dead," that nothing was happening at all.

The result was an exhibit, engaging and mature. The idea of environmental stewardship remained unsaid but otherwise significantly present. The concern about the dying Naga/Bikol River occupies a prominent space in the discourse of local leader and environmental advocates, the Ateneo de Naga University included. Even the present Mayor of the city, John G. Bongat, lauded the exhibit, for its focus on the river that has remained an "integral part of our life."

A quiet rush of memory and remembrances suffuses the works. The viewer gets this sense he is looking at scenes slowly fading and never to come back again.

All the photos are time slowed down, except for the one by Frances Joyce Vasquez, which shows three boys leaping from some height. For the student of photography, this shot embodies what the acknowledged master of candid shot and father of modern photojournalism, Henri Cartier Bresson, called
"the decisive moment."

In the other works the theme of non-movement is fused with departures but never with arrivals, as if the waterscape allows only leavings but never returns. This must be part of how we view development. Everyone is leaving this land, and all those who come from outside bring upon the land some measure of gross disrespect for the past.

Two photographs are remarkable for the theme of non-movement: Paghalat-halat ("Waiting") by Marie Trinidad and "Sa Baroto" (On the Boat) by Kristine Gonzales. The first shows men waiting. A witty cropping catches the prow of another boat beside it. In the second photograph, two boys, one hidden and almost unseen by the prow of the boat, are looking at something. The water hyacinths around them make the water placid even as the small boat has caused small swirling around the plants.