[silence, or the sound of drowning]
[Caption reads: “Young Tagalog - Woman - Manila”]
I went through 3,700+ digitized photographs taken more than a century ago.
On my computer, on my tablet, I looked at, scrolled up, down, pressed, swiped left, right. Not yet pored through.
I made a list of possible subjects… “to study.” Something impossible. Or at least not possible to bear alone.
Here, a partial and incomplete list of metonyms, notes and impressions:
(not in the order in which they were cataloged by the museum or not in the order that I saw them)
White cloth —
Decontextualizing “jungle.” Or is it to make whiteness the context?
There were pictures where people and objects looked as if they were floating.
The grass on the ground, peeking out of all of that white
This reminds me of the branch someone obviously used to cover their private parts…
In this picture, it was on the ground.
Theirs?
Ours?
The proverbial: rice terraces, planting rice, unpaved roads, women bathing in a body of water
White man, small brown man, small brown woman
The class picture, the conversions, the lines, the soldiers, the western clothes
There were these weird, floating contraptions… Some were looms, actually. For weaving.
Boats, baskets, skulls, jars
Deformed mountain feet, deformed mouth
A woman with albinism, a mestiza, a white woman (the wife of an official)
Mother and child. Children.
About the skull– I saw this picture while I was in bed. It showed the face of… It was an Aeta.
Their head was rotten. Rotted? Cheeks were sunk, but their hair was still intact.
Part of the caption read “… in the condition in which it was taken from a grave.”
I was trying to fall asleep.
I saw it again the moment I closed my eyes.
I went to the bathroom to wash my face, and / but there was a cockroach in the sink.
I tried to get it out. But then its limbs detached…
Apparently, I just learned, they can regrow their limbs?
Then the cockroach slipped into the drain.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s still stuck there.
I find adverbs of frequency interesting these days.
I was at a popular beach destination recently. To vacation. To vacate. I vacated.
I had no idea it’s that commercialized there now. Like, what?
Everything’s convenient and expensive.
(Inside voice) But the food was amazing. The mango shake…
Wait, I forgot to tell you —
About this mango I ate one morning at the start of the year?
It was the size of my hand. A third of my face!
After I washed it, I pinched it near its beak. Ripped its skin, peeled it counter-clockwise.
I took a bite of the soft meat and it engulfed me back.
Not me— I mean, my nose, my cheeks, my mouth.
But not my eyes and my ears, certainly not my shoulders, my knees and my toes. Haha.
Wait. Can I say that?
[ . . . ]
Yellow, sticky juice dripped from my mouth, trickled down my hands and elbows.
The kitchen table was wet.
There were pictures of mouths, too. Of a man, deformed. Of rivers. Something about a ritual.
I thought, “This is a mango.”
A mango among mangoes. The mangoest of them all. The epitome of a fruit.
“This is a mango.”
It was so sweet and delicious.
But on my last bite, it tasted sour.
But going back to the island…
The bodies of men and women and children.
A headless body tied to poles. Multiple pictures of it being carried, and
thrown into a ditch. The gashes on its body. The fact of his headlessness.
Another dead man. Wounded by a tulisan.
Another dead man. A dead tulisan.
Numbers written on paper stuck to people’s chest and arms.
Unrelated, possibly, also: prisoners of a provincial jail.
A car. A flute and other musical instruments
The pictures of a group of people in front of a phonograph were not in this collection, unfortunately.
This one.
But there were pictures of those who impersonated
“God the Father, God the Son, the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, etc.”
Etc., etc.
Field crops, mountains, vintas, sultans, soldiers
Smiths, seamstresses, millers, pointed teeth, distortions, deformities
(not alphabetical, clearly, not exhaustive)
Funerals.
“a grave tunneled into the hillside”
Some people were naked because they were naked.
Some were forced to wear their nakedness. You can see it in their faces.
In the way they bent their arms or slightly turned their hips.
Women and girls unclothed. Covering their breasts. Standing.
Just standing there.
The slit of their girlhood.
The men and boys, too… were undressed.
Everybody.
Even the land.
The photographs I liked the most were the ones with blurry faces. They were not still enough.
And this one of the pearl diver in a diving suit.
In the island, I entered this cave…
It led to water. Of course. And I jumped.
Sometimes I think about our right to be forgotten.

List of Images Used - 78 Total

1. 5691
2. 5742
3. 5906
4. 5996
5. 6072
6. 6073
7. 6168
8. 6556
9. 6557
10. 6681
11. 6955
12. 6971
13. 7188
14. 7189
15. 7191
16. 7192
17. 7243
18. 7353
19. 7354
20. 7355
21. 7550
22. 7550v
23. 7705
24. 7706
25. 7707
26. 7760
27. 7773
28. 7774
29. 7787
30. 7788
31. 7789
32. 7791
33. 7792
34. 7811
35. 7814
36. 7816
37. 7817
38. 7818
39. 7839
40. 7880
41. 7894
42. 7917
43. 8448
44. 8674
45. 8738
46. 8785
47. 8788
48. 8789
49. 8791
50. 8792
51. 8793
52. 8899
53. 8920
54. 8921
55. 8922
56. 8923
57. 9048
58. 9051
59. 9054
60. 9056
61. 9080
62. 9083
63. 9084
64. 9085
65. 9086
66. 9092
67. 9120
68. 9150
69. 9151
70. 10111
71. 10117
72. 10118
73. 10133
74. 10154
75. 10184
76. 23274
77. 23275
78. 23276

• Must be watched with English subtitles
• Watch online: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/781729852

*WIP shown in December 2022 at Asian Artist Moving Image Platform (AAMP)’s 4th Forum Festival 2022 - Symptom, Index, Speculation, via Los Otros

https://www.dekolonyalidad.org/

[Live and so far contains only the call for submissions]

Draft - List of Impressions, Metonyms, Marginalia, Decomposition (after going through every photograph without reading the captions)

The white cloth / backdrop

Western clothes

Mother and child

Front, side, front, side

Native clothing, western clothing

Women clothed

Women in bathing in the river (“three maidens”)

Some clothed, some bare breasted

Nudity and exploitation of bodies

Death and burial

The Bilibid prisoners (there’s also this scientist from the Bureau of Science who studied bodies, weighed their brains, etc.)

Weaving implements (these contraptions are beautiful)

Baskets (proverbial)

Cloth covering

Genitalia (gratuitous)

The slit of their girlhood (what need was there to subject these girls to that?)

Spanish mestizas

Towns, unpaved roads

Rice terraces (proverbial)

Sports and schooling, class photographs

A man— or a body tied to poles. Multiple shots of the body being carried and thrown into a ditch. The gashes on its body. The fact of his headlessness.

A head of an Aeta; a skull of. The hair was still intact, but the cheeks… the face was disintegrating (this image haunts me; it popped up in my head while I was trying to fall asleep the night I saw the photograph)

Candid, out of focus photographs (i love that those people moved, and so were not ‘captured’ by the “evil eye”)

A naked man

A naked woman

Three naked women bathing in a body of water

Clothes on the floor

More naked women than naked men. Not the fact of nakedness but that they are women. A handful of men showing their genitalia.

Frontal. Side.

White background

White cloth background the grass peeking out from the ground

Before and after. Western clothed.

Paper with a number on men’s chest or arm. Also women.

Floating in white space.

White woman with an indigenous woman. Who is this? (The wife of an American official?)

Girls covering their breasts

Floating hands and feet

Floating contraptions, baskets, skulls

Leaves down on the ground so we see their genitalia. Girls

Girls with no clothes whatsoever, just standing there.

…

[tbc]

In a previous research I completed a couple of years ago, I explored how indigenous peoples were represented in select oil paintings during the American Colonial period in the Philippines, in the early half of the 20th century. The paintings bore resemblance to how Filipinos were represented in texts – photographs, postcards, articles, etc. that were used to aid in civilizing and colonizing projects. What I wanted to do then was to ‘give back’ ‘power’(?) to those Othered. But writing about them eventually felt disingenuous as I am not from a minority group, an Othered group. And it soon felt like I was trying to speak/assume on their behalf and that didn’t sit right with me.

One of the lessons of that time was to engage with other people. This is one of the things I would like to do for this project. (But how? To follow.)

I am here not unaware of my subjecthood. And I think this is me making strides to reconcile with the ambivalence of my being a postcolonial subject. (There is a lot to say about this, but for another time.)

For now I would like to state that I am approaching this project with the ff. in mind:

• the researcher/writer/artist, a.k.a. me, as human

• knowing/learning histories

• sharing, stories and knowledges

• focus on learning and asking questions, not ‘solving’

• experimental, non-formal, non-academic [?], interdisciplinary, process-based, non-rigid

• alternative methods, e.g. “friendship as method”

This project could also be an exercise in decolonization? decoloniality? Something to do with slow and consistent learning and unlearning of the inherited effects of colonization.

Questions about The Worcester Photographs and RJM’s Collection

1. How many unique images are there from all the collections scattered in different archives? Not all prints have glass plates and not all glass plates have prints.¹

2. What made Worcester select these 3,700+ photographs to sell those to Küppers-Loosen?

3. Re: frequency. In the RJM collection, which locales and what subjects are most photographed? (Northern Luzon and Aetas?)

Working Bibliography

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Foreman, John. The Philippine Islands: A Political, Geographical, Ethnographical, Social and Commercial History of the Philippine Archipelago Embracing the Whole Period of Spanish Rule with an Account of the Succeeding American Insular Government. 3rd Edition. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1906.

Halili, Servando D., Jr. Iconography of the New Empire. Quezon City: UP Press, 2006. Hiddleston, Jane. Understanding Postcolonialism. Stocksfield: Acumen, 2009. Book.

Holt, Elizabeth Mary. Colonizing Filipinas: Nineteenth-Century Representations of the Philippines in Western Historiography. Quezon City: ADMU Press, c2002. Book.

Labrador, Ana M. “The Representation of Bontok Identity in Museums and in Central Bontoc, Northern Philippines.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Gonville and Caius College, 1998.

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https://publiclab.org/ https://logicmag.io/