First of two parts

MORE than a century-and-a-half ago, fotografía is as an alien concept to the archipelagic colony of Spain in the Pacific. Similarly, it is also an alien concept in much of Asia. To some degree, Europe was only beginning to embrace the newfound art technology. After all, the daguerreotype of 1839 was still in its earliest stage. But still, fotografía, in the context of East and West, is undeniably a Western invention that was brought to the exotic, yet vast sphere of the Eastern hemisphere.

Fotografía in Las Islas Filipinas cannot be solely viewed in the nitty-gritty years of its existence in the 19th century. In a more in-depth manner, it has to be grasped in terms of the evolution of visual representations.

Contrary to what Westerners often projected, the people of Las Islas Filipinas had a culture of its own prior to the coming of the Spaniards in the 16th century. They had a written language, a system of writing, an inclination for music and dance, and yes, penchant for imagery. Take for instance the Pintados or the tattooed people of the Visayas, who practiced the bodily decoration not just for aesthetic reasons, but more importantly signifying their status in their own communities.

But starting from Portuguese explorer Fernando de Magallanes and his fleet of Spanish explorers to the final “bloodless” acquisition of the islands in the hands of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, the arrival of the 3Gs – the Gospel, the Gold, and the Glory – transformed the realm of visual representation.

In what may have been a quest to comprehend the newly acquired islands, Spanish chroniclers recorded their observations of the environs and the life of the native settlers. More than written observations were the illustrations, which depicted an untamed group of lands and the “wild” native settlers whose practices were seen as “devilish.”

In the course of more than two centuries, the usage of visual representations was transposed – from the colonizer to the colonized. It initially took off when native artisans painfully labored in the creation of architectural structures that echoed Christian religiosity and Western philosophy. Later on, the ilustrados began to familiarize themselves with Western visual arts when drawing and painting academies began opening in Manila during the first and second quarters of the 1800s. The practice of fine arts expanded when numerous artists spurned works that range from religious interpretations to landscape paintings or the everyday life of the natives.

Parallel to the introduction of fine arts in the country was the introduction of photography. The 1840s is widely believed to have been the historic decade when photography entered Philippine shores.

If the accounts of Spaniard Sinibaldo de Mas in Informe sobre el estado de las isles Filipinas en 1842 is to be believed, he himself was the one who brought along the daguerreotype camera in 1841. As a diplomat-cum-poet, he crisscrossed islands and supposedly photographed natives as well as foreigners. Lest the accounts of de Mas were partially false, then the consolation would be found in the daguerreotype photograph of Intramuros, which dates back to the 1840s. (To be concluded)

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