Postcards from The Philippines

“Lumayo ka man sa akin
at ako'y iyong limutin
masakit man sa damdamin”
(Rodel Naval)

“Stay away from me
and forget me
it hurts emotionally”
(Rodel Naval)

Payas. Ilocos Norte. Philippines, 9 July 2005

The Philippines was the first door to Asia opened for me, back in July 2005, when every aspect of my life was completely different. I wasn't even taking pictures at the time, but I was still working in the marketing sector.

It was too short trip, just about ten days, and my feelings towards that trip are mixed because they are linked to a person I have erased from my life and memory.

But a lot of time has passed and it also makes me feel tender to look at these old photos taken with my first bridge camera, and give them new life.

Certainly, the Filipino community in Rome was the first from which I felt adopted, and for over five years I lived every day with them, perfectly learning their language – Tagalog – and a few dialects, even if I am forgetting it now, unfortunately; learning as much as I could about their culture, trying to tell it in every way, through newspaper articles and photographs, to the point that in January 2015 I was awarded the title of Knight of Rizal from the Philippines, which is among the highest cultural titles in this country: recognition for the spread of Filipino culture and the life of José Rizal, their national hero.

 

As I always say, I started to get passionate about photography thanks to the beauty of the faces and the colors of Bangladesh, but it is certainly thanks to the Filipino community that the love for other cultures and migrant communities was born in me, which became the heart of all my work and photography courses, here in Rome, for over ten years; and not a few people who know me in my city link my photography more to cultural mediation and to an anthropological rather than to an artistic, or simply aesthetic, approach.

If all this is possible, it was thanks to my Filipino friends at the time, for which these photographs are my personal way of keeping alive the bond that is fading over time.

A few days ago I got a comment from a friend of mine who said that my life seems to belong to many houses and countries, and it is a profound truth.

By now, this confusion for me has become a fact that I don't even notice anymore. I live in this mixture of identity. Sometimes I like it, sometimes it leaves me with a tinge of sadness. Because the beauty of a journey is also that of being able to return, finally, to one's own home. I don't know where my house is anymore.

Burgos. Ilocos Norte. 10 July 2005

But feeling loved by so many completely different people, from South America to deep Asia makes me happy, at least it seems to give meaning to my existence that still doesn't find any direction.

But that's another topic.

I don't even want to tell here about the Filipino people and culture that dozens of pages would not be enough to summarize it. Maybe I'll go back later, why not maybe with a series of ten stories like the other countries in this blog, but on a thematic level, here in Rome.

 

These photographs are the only ones I have left and they are simple, anyone could take them.

They tell a little about Ilocos Norte, where I was, on the extreme northern border of the Philippines, on the coast, among fishing villages, white beaches, and the busy streets of Laog City.

Ilocos is divided into two parts: Ilocos Sur, in the south, and Ilocos Norte, in the north, the land of ex-president Marcos, and it is possible to tell whether someone comes from one of the two parts only by the way they pronounce the word “yes” in dialect: Wuen, with the initial wu sweet in the south and hard as stone and deep in the north.

True, they are simple photographs, but if I can say today that I am a photographer, it is also thanks to these first shots.

And above all, I am what I am now also thanks to the Filipino people, the first to call me “kababayan”: countryman.

Bangui. Ilocos Norte. 17 July 2005

Bangui. Ilocos Norte. 17 July 2005

The white beach of Pagudpud. Ilocos Norte. 10 July 2005

The beaches of Ilocos Norte. Ilocos Norte. July 2005

The fishing village of Payas. Ilocos Norte. July 2005

Laog City. Ilocos Norte. July 2005

“Calesa” at Laoag City. Ilocos Norte. 21 July 2005

Knight of Rizal investiture ceremony. Philippine Embassy. Rome, 25 January 2015

 

Recommended song: Rodel Naval “Lumayo ka man sa akin”

Italian version