Romance vs.Democracy

If you don’t like having your photograph taken, there’s only one thing to do: hang out with photographers, photography hobbyists, and camera collectors. This is what you call “hiding in plain sight”: if you’re constantly obstructing their view, they won’t regard you as the view. It works for me.

Another advantage of being friends with photographers is that if you need an official photo for a book cover or an article, you can get one in about two seconds. This is how I’ve managed to have my picture taken by the late, great Mang Dick Baldovino, the Manny Goloyugo, the Patrick de Koenigswarter, the Chuvaness (who snapped my column photo), the Ricky Villabona, and various brilliant trolls who will take offense at not being mentioned (which is why they are not mentioned).

Mang Dick, who mentored many of our finest photographers, was a great fan of the Magnum photojournalists — particularly Robert Capa, who had documented the Spanish Civil War. Like his idol, he was partial to Leica cameras, of which he had an impressive collection. I remember one in particular: a 1930s vintage Leica with a wood and metal body. I’m no photographer, but I coveted that camera as an object of beauty.

In 1995 or ’96, my short story collection was being reprinted with a new cover, and I needed a proper photo. So I asked Mang Dick to take my picture. One afternoon we sat on the steps of the Administration Building at UP Diliman, where he futzed with the Leica and occasionally looked at the sky.

“Are we taking pictures?” I churlishly asked.

“Yes,” he said patiently, peering through the viewfinder at some trees.

“Then why are we sitting on these steps?”

“We’re waiting for the light,” he explained.

A few minutes later, the sun went behind a cloud and Mang Dick leisurely walked down the steps. Then he started taking pictures. I didn’t have to pose, and since I hardly even looked at the camera, I had no chance to get self-conscious or make horrible faces. The results are still my favorite photographs. In the pictures, I look the way I think I look.

As official hanger-on and in-house critic (“It’s out of focus.” “No, it isn’t.” “It’s out of focus.” “No, it isn’t!” “It’s out of focus.” “Get out!”), I have been allowed to join photographers’ voyages to the Mecca of Vintage Cameras. Twice a month, my friends Michel and Bernard-Henri (not their real names, and they’re not French, either) descend on the second-hand camera shops of R. Hidalgo Street in Quiapo. We have a routine for these expeditions.

Me: Don’t you guys already have too many cameras?

Michel and Bernard-Henri: We’re not buying anything. (They look around furtively.)

Me: Didn’t you just buy another Soviet camera from that guy in the Ukraine?

Michel: Oh no, no, that was a long time ago. (Bad acting follows.)

Me: You know what you are? You’re camera junkies.

Bernard-Henri: Hey, I’m just buying film.

Michel: I’m looking for replacement parts for my antique cameras.

Bernard-Henri: That’s it, we’re just looking for parts.

So they visit the camera shops and fondle parts.

Hidalgo Street has long been a hub for photographers and collectors. They prowl the rows of shops, hoping to find previously-owned Leicas, Nikons, Rolliflexes and other gadgets for a pittance. They may not find exactly what they’re looking for, but they find something. In the 1990s, photographers switched to digital cameras en masse and disposed of their manual cameras. A lot of them ended up in second-hand shops such as these. The trips to Quiapo are really treasure hunts: under that patina of age, that encrustation of rust, may be a lens with the artistic DNA of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

For the record, my friends have nothing against digital cameras. “They’re convenient,” Michel says. “You carry it one your pocket, you see something, you take a picture. Easy.”

“Then why do you keep buying, um, parts?”

“Because old cameras are about the Indian and not the arrow,” explains Michel. “The picture is less about the subject than the photographer. It’s a form of self-expression.”

Bernard-Henri quotes the American photographer Garry Winogrand. “I take a photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Manual cameras are fussy, clunky, and heavy, plus film is expensive. They require skill and practice, and no two manual cameras will take the exact same photograph. Digital cameras are fuss-free, small, and light, and you never have to worry about wasting film. They require minimal skill: you point, you shoot, you transfer the photos to your computer. They have an assembly-line quality to them. Manual cameras are moody, like Ingmar Bergman psychodramas; digital cameras are cheerful, like Hollywood blockbusters. Manual cameras are all about the individual, and digital cameras are for the masses.

Manual is romantic, digital is democratic.

This week I’m trying out a Kodak Easy Share M1033 digital camera. The results next week.

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