RP Newsletter #12: A letter to Ray Albano

Raymundo Albano is the museum director of the Cultural Center of the Philippines from 1971 until his death in 1985. This is a letter for the Quasimodo of the cultural center.

Dear Sir Ray,

How did you do it? And I mean all of it?

Ok. Apologies. It was not kind of me to introduce myself. My mother calls me A.g.,My wife calls me love, and my son calls me Papa. I call myself a photography writer but I haven’t been writing as much. My biggest excuse is the minutiae of surviving. To be honest, that my love for the craft has disappeared. I’ve worked with photography for the greater half of my life but the past 3 years have been unkind to everyone. We are in a poly crisis of the global pandemic, decline of democracy, climate crisis, and unchecked capitalism. It makes me wonder how you would tackle all it.

Then again, you were able to forge your own playground in the cultural center and found a place where you can express yourself in the middle of the dictatorship. Always cognizant of its existence. Sickness and scoliosis was never a hindrance. Your response was to play with it. All the stories I heard are that it was full of play rather than work. It made an excellent platform for Ma’m Judy, Ms. Marian, et. al. I was lucky enough to have the same opportunity in co-founding a college of fine arts in Cavite and developing their photography program. I emphasized making the college a playground in a place of learning. I designed the programs for critical thinking and collaboration. Adding a lot of humanities and not craft. The photography program I designed is rooted in photographing, thinking, and moving. I was happy in that position but the field of education is different from an art institution I suppose. Did you ever get to play psychologist one hour and the next, an educator, and after a social worker? When all I wanted was to work with photography. Then again, it wasn’t a great idea for me to work 60kms. away from my house. Despite that and the soul sucking administrative work, I was satisfied especially when I got to see my students play.

Maybe it was what I lacked in my life recently: play.

Funny that it seems it is a recurring theme for how you view things. Your view that color photography will be the new documentation and that color makes it lovely and thus acceptable has all the trappings of prioritizing enjoyment. If only you knew the debates color photography spawned. People have equated the capturing of souls to black and white and the capturing of clothes to color photography! Pathetic of course but it seems you were more concerned in photography’s documentary nature and the new type of enjoyment color will bring. Your practice is about that huh? The pleasure of working with art.

What scares me about my practice of working with photography is that I felt that I cracked the code of what I want or how I see images: When the thought and/or idea is executed in a manner that the audience understands what the photographer is trying to communicate. Not to mention that the best photography is the never ending practice of it. I still appreciate a good project but I tend to look at work as a whole. I prefer looking at seeing outcomes than unlocking intent.

I guess all this is that I’m lost and looking for direction. You have been a lighthouse of our country’s art. You have guided the way for so many and I want that too. What great audacity to take over CCP, cause all sorts of mayhem, and then leave. I want that too. I don’t know where to go and how to find the answers. All the crumbs are there. I’ll follow along and hope that I can to some degree have fun in the process.

Apologies if I dumped everything on you. This feels cathartic. I have a talk on Nov. 25th which pretty much is about everything there is to know about reading and writing about photography. I’m looking at my draft right now and it has the risk of being too academic. I have to change it to have more fun.

Please wish me luck!

• A.g.

P.S.

Is it ok if I borrow the name “Philippine Photographic Supplement” if ever I get to launch a writing journal for photographic writing? Although I’m leaning towards having people have different platforms rather than one (welcome to the modern internet sir Ray!) but i’ll see which would be more fun. See, i’m learning already.

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