THE PHOTOGRAPHERS GALLERY Talk: Hannah Reyes Morales (Online) 24.6.20
Hannah Reyes Morales is a storyteller, photojournalist and documentary maker. Born in Manila, as a child she looked to images to learn about the past. She uses the photograph to understand the present and the people in it. Her work, which often shows individuals in conditions of poverty, is tender and she photographs peoples with dignity aware of the social injustices and extreme inequalities there. I was attracted to this talk as I have visited and worked in the Philippines many times.
She grew up looking at images in history books that made her uncomfortable as they portrayed native Filipinos as savages; I remember seeing images like this when I visited the Philippines last year; for instance a poster about the human zoo that was set up in 1904. Though she couldn’t articulate the discomfort she felt, she understood the need to be equal with those we photograph, rather than photographing people out of context.
Hannah wanted to represent people around her, and became a photojournalist in the time of the drug war, with violence, death, mass incarceration. But she also saw life continuing and happening and wanted to help make space to show this other side: love and intimacy in a hostile environment. She described it as becoming more intentional about what she was capturing.
She reached a point where she had to do work that she aligned with even though she had to validate why her Filipino perspective was important; she explained how the Filipino perspective is unique but also global, partly because of the wide “diaspora” (a scattered population that originate from a geographic locality). Indeed her understanding of America was defined by the contents of the Balilkbayan boxes (corrugated box) containing items sent home by overseas Filipinos.
Hannah talks about the importance of the Filipino concept of other people “Kapwa” and seeing yourself in others, a shared inner self when she is working, as this is what she aspires to when taking photographs. She recognises the humanity in herself and others and this is how she engages in the act of story telling. . Kapwa is also about sharing burdens whilst at the beginning she was answering individual questions with her photos she now thinks in general about not forgetting the past but moving forward. Hannah realises now that she has enough bodies of works that are threaded together to begin to answer questions
Roots from ashes connects her to her grandmother who along with others was interred in 1944 bythe Japanese Imperial in red house, and repeatedly raped for days. Though many of the are now dead some gathered together to tell their story through the media, in the hope of seeking support and justice.
The Shelter from the storm is her work about women displaced by typhoons who wind up working in the sex trade. She remembers seeing historical news cuttings of women being used in the sex trade under Vietnamese rule as well as the American’s. The work is about how Filipino women’s’ bodies are commodified. She is also trying to understand intra generational trauma.
Her work on beauty culture and redefining beauty across 5 continents, focuses on how to reclaim or redefine beauty and how it is now much more inclusive:
She believes that as a photographer you need to learn when to step aside to let someone tell their own story, so a good translation is one that doesn’t alter someone else’s narrative.
In the time of Corona Virus she returns to the importance of understanding where she is in the context of history and to use photography to heal by moving forward. She hopes that the work that she’s done will have some effect on those situations. Hannah’s success is her immersion in the country is that she’s not capturing what’s literally in the photograph and that she widens the lens to open the image. I’m interested that she thinks it is important to document your own communities but would also like to see a more inclusive landscape for photographers; for instance that there is perspectives of the Philippines from outsiders and those outside of mainstream authorship -She has hopes that all will be able to be interpreters.
My Learning:
- When documenting someone elses story consider stepping aside to let them tell their own story.
- Try to photgrah people in context and with dignity
- She has varied styles of photographing I terms of colour saturation, lighting and perspective but these can still sit together well as a series.
References:
Givhan, R. and Morales, H. R. (2020) ‘The idea of beauty is always shifting. Today, it’s more inclusive than ever’ In: National Geographic 07/01/2020 At: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2020/02/beauty-today-celebrates-all-social-media-plays-a-role-feature/ (Accessed 27/09/2020).
Talk: Hannah Reyes Morales (online) At https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/talks-and-events/talk-hannah-reyes-morales-online (Accessed 22/07/2020).
Hannah Reyes Morales (2020) At: https://hannah.ph/Redefining-Beauty (Accessed 27/9//2020).
Photography 2: Documentary 