Photographs From The Dead
On weekends and during breaks from shooting the TV shows Bubble Gang, Show Me The Manny, and Family Feud, director Uro de la Cruz goes looking for “parts.” “Parts” is his euphemism for “old film cameras”; partly to prevent friends from saying, “You’re going to buy another camera?!”, partly because he knows he has rescued too many half-extinct cameras from junk shops, flea markets, and antique stores.
Uro’s obsession with photography began in 1979, when he started scouring the second-hand camera shops on R. Hidalgo Street in Quiapo. Among his prize finds was an old Nikon camera with the letters “OJ” engraved on it. Many years later, a Chinese photographer explained that the Nikon was manufactured in “Occupied Japan,” making it a rare collector’s item. In the early ‘90s Uro shifted from screenwriting (Virgin Forest, Scorpio Nights) to directing for film and TV, and for a decade his camera-hunting expeditions stopped. They resumed in the ’00s, around the time that photography hobbyists where disposing of their manual cameras for the more convenient digital ones. A lot of these manual cameras ended up in second-hand stores.
In 2007 Uro heard that an antique shop in Kamuning, Quezon City was selling a Kodak 828. He examined the Kodak and found a piece of paper stuck to it, with inscriptions about exposures and the use of filters. “Whose camera was this?” he asked the shop owner.
“That belonged to the father of Philippine photography, Teodulo Protomartir,” was the reply. Like many prolific writers Uro is a hoarder of information, but this bit of information was new to him. He had heard of the early generation of Filipino photographers, names like Vitug and Razon, but never Protomartir.
On his next trip to the Kamuning shop, Uro was rifling through an album of old photos when he saw a snapshot of a man standing next to a familiar sight. It was a marker that he’d seen throughout his childhood in Lucban, Quezon, and it said, “Summit 1,500 ft above sea level.” The man standing next to it was wearing safari attire reminiscent of old Tarzan movies, and he had a Leica camera hanging from a shoulder strap. “That,” said the shop owner, “is Teodulo Protomartir in 1930.”
The picture seemed to call out to Uro. “Without getting all mystical, I sensed that there was a connection between us,” Uro recalls. Leafing through the album, he saw a shot of Protomartir writing “35mm Club Manila” on a rock. That was the name of the photography club Protomartir had started in the 1930s. Uro himself was the president of a photography club called Range Finder Filipinas. He bought the dusty album, which contained photos taken by the 35mm Club. Protomartir had been a great promoter of photography, teaching at the University of Santo Tomas and mentoring younger photographers including Nap Jamir Sr, Dr. Victor Potenciano, Mariano de la Cruz, and Dick Baldovino.
But there were more pictures. The friendly shop owner told Uro that he had a box of film negatives—photos taken by Protomartir himself—at his house, and his wife was complaining about the stench. When old film disintegrates it has an unpleasant vinegar smell. He had to get rid of the stuff—would Uro take it off his hands?
The photos were in a square 120 format, and for the next two years Uro digitized them using a basic scanner. Meanwhile he was searching for a professional scanner, and last year Silverlens Gallery offered to help him print the photographs.
Protomartir had witnessed a vital chapter in the history of our country. Through a lens he recorded the devastation of Manila in World War II, and celebrated the rebirth of the Republic. He was present on July 4, 1946 when Philippine independence was restored after 48 years; his camera captured the exact moment when the American flag was lowered and the Philippine flag raised.
These photographs are a living document of a past that survives only in hazy memory. Here is the city of Manila in the rubble of World War
II and the Liberation. We see the shell of the Administrative Building standing in a pile of debris, the buildings of Avenida Rizal consumed by fire down to their twisted steel skeletons. There is the Manila Cathedral in the burned-out hulk of Intramuros, like a ruin from some ancient civilization. Behind bent iron gates the Metropolitan Theatre seems to be calling out for rescue. (It is still calling.)
On Wednesday, a nearly-forgotten photographer and a part of our history we thought was lost will be restored to life. “Being There 1946: The Legacy of Teodulo Protomartir,” photographs from the collection of Uro de la Cruz, opens at Silverlens Gallery in Makati on June 9 and will be on view until July 3.
“We like to think that film is forever,” Uro says. “It’s not, it disintegrates and literally turns to vinegar. But digital technology can help retrieve fragile images and keep them alive. In this case, technology has brought back the dead.”
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Silverlens Gallery is at 2320 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City, telephone 816-0044, website www.silverlensphoto.com.
For more information on RangeFinderFilipinas, visit www.rangefinderfilipinas.com.
