A Parallel Planets piece by Unknown
Parallel Planets presents Bahag de Guzman
in Stellar Spotlight: A Master in the Making
Story and Interview by Erin Emocling
Mentioned: right timings, ultimate goals, and taking pictures as a (possibly) mental disorder
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A Feature that’s Two Years in the Making
Well, not exactly. I don’t need that longevity to be able to come up with a write-up about someone whose works I personally admire. But today, as I write this, I am equally honored and thrilled to have had this exclusive chat interview because I’ve been wooing this man for the past couple of years, trying to get a chance to know what he is really like behind his lenses.
Bahag de Guzman was born and raised in the same city as mine but I haven’t met him in real life. I only discovered his penchant for film photography through Jun Sabayton, a Manila-based director, when I asked him for suggestions on local film shooters to interview and he mentioned Bahag. My initial reaction was to search for his works on the Internet and, immediately, his old but still very prolific Nazareno series caught my eyes. I knew right there and then that he definitely deserved a feature.
While I was in the painstaking process, I realized that Bahag is a lot hard to feature since there isn’t a lot of information about him online. Months passed and every time I see his random photo posts from Tokyo, I couldn’t help but wonder if the interview would still ever happen. He never said no to my invitation, though. In fact, he already gave me a yes, but it never transpired into actualization because, I believe, it wasn’t the right timing yet. This challenged me more.
Two years was worth the wait because I got more than what I asked for: my initial 10-item questionnaire turned into this four-hour casual conversation, as if I’ve known Bahag in real life. Now that you know, you’ll understand why this interview means a lot to me and my new-found webzine—so special that this debuts my new editorial series, predictably called Stellar Spotlight, which highlights an artist’s life and works for one whole month. Indulge!
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
Hues behind and Greys between Monochromes
As far back as he can remember, Richard Atrero de Guzman always sees the world in a peripheral point of view: indefinite, intuitive, and inspiring. He has been dabbling on advertising and documentary photography for almost 15 years now but the way I see it, this man has only just begun with his journey.
On legal papers, his first name is Richard but his penname, Bahag, has lived up to his personality. It is a shortened version of Filipino word “bahaghari,” which means rainbow. Denotatively, “bahag” may also refer to the traditional loincloth worn by the indigenous tribes in the northern Philippines.
Although it’s a local term, “bahag” is quite unusual for a name so I was always curious about its etymology. “It was suggested by a friend, who described my life as colorful. I woke up one morning, thought it was a great idea, and deliberately decided to change my name,” he recalled.
Bahag is not your average shoot-with-film bring-to-the-developing-lab kind of analogue snapper. He is way more hardcore than that because he painstakingly hand-processes all his films in his studio. The photographs in this article belong to one of his most recent series called Sanja Festival 2013—Tokyo’s biggest traditional festival that is celebrated in the streets of Asakusa.
These images were taken using a Contax T3 compact film camera and around 20 rolls Kodak Tri-X black and white films and was processed using Kodak D76, pushed to 2 stops. Everything was shot in two days; the actual dates are visible on the photos. He sent me over 300 images (almost half a gigabyte in size!) and as I was browsing through them, I already knew that choosing which photographs to appear here would be sweet struggle. And it was.
The way I see it, Bahag’s black and white photographs are his subconscious representations of his alternate world. His name speaks of multi-chromes but his works emanate in a single shade. In spite of the lack of colors, the crisp and contrast of this particular set are so hifalutin that they deserve to be compiled and printed as a book or showcased as a standalone exhibit.
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
Living in a foreign land is so alienating that it is close to becoming surreal. Although his great migration took place in the same continent only, Bahag treats living in Japan like living in an entirely different planet. “Weather transition makes me very emotional. I couldn't explain it but there's something about the seasonal changes,” he told me as he struggled to pinpoint his feelings.
Bahag has been living in the land of Totoros for four years now. He is blessed with a Japanese wife, a three-year old daughter, and a new child coming soon. Armed with these priceless charms, he still sorely misses his homeland, He is fervidly looking forward to an upcoming trip to the Manila before the year ends. “I feel like I can do a lot more [photography projects] in the Philippines because it is my home country,” he humbly confessed.
“I’ve been thinking of doing a lot of things there, Erin. Shooting here [in Japan] has helped me identify myself even more, especially when I reflect on my photographs alone. When you’re in your homeland, you know its culture, you know its people. Your images will come out differently, too. Taking pictures in a foreign land is life-changing. It’s like I was reborn here, that I’m 4 years old all over again. Here, I am trained to read, to look, to listen, and to feel more,” Bahag reflected on his experiences in Japan.
He is now more focused and sure on what he wants to do next. He plans on literally taking a trip down memory lane when he goes back in Manila and shoot where he used to go back when he was younger. “Balintawak, Monumento, Novaliches, Blumentritt, Caloocan,” he eagerly enumerated.
Manila, indeed, is where Bahag’s heart is. It is where it has always been. And he's going back to it really soon.
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
As someone who has interviewed a number of film photographers from around the world, asking why someone still uses something that’s supposed to be “already dead” is just part of the drill. However, every time I ask this, I always get varying heartfelt replies. One way or another, this validates a film photographer’s love for film, at least for me. So while I was in the middle of being lost for relevant questions to throw at Bahag, I went ahead and asked him, “Why film?”
To be honest, I didn’t get shivers when he told me his reason. He answered plain and simple: he uses film because it’s beautiful and tangible. “Shooting with 36 shots is like homemade cooking,” he answered with a laughter. His reply made me felt something more meaningful, something that would, later on, lead me to realizing how Bahag truly is a devoted film photographer. He didn't need an adornment in words because his photographs already spoke louder than the former. The case is closed. The deal is sealed.
Aside from his grand gallery online, Bahag also shared that he has a treasure-boxful of unscanned, well-preserved films from his earlier shoots in the Philippines. “I have lots of coup d'état documentations. The rallyists then weren’t so serious. Some were even paid to participate. They didn’t even have tanks! They had hilarious floats, though,” he cracked. Having heard this from the man himself, I felt like I was speaking to a male version of Vivian Meyer, whose rare gems are just waiting to be discovered, except he only already revealed to me where the goldmine is. Ha!
“Film photographers should always develop, scan, and upload their works right away so more people would be able to see and give feedback. This is one way for film to cope with digital,” he wisely instructed.
As we continually exchanged messages with only an hour difference between our time zones, I was hoping to unearth something really surprising about Bahag: something that would make me go “Whoa!” all the more. Without me having a slightest idea, Bahag blurted out how he was in the Philippines’ national team for Fencing for 8 years, the same time when he was still studying Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. I couldn’t even think of what to reply but he was already laughing as he added, “I won 3 gold medals in the Southeast Asian games!”
Now that he has a family of his own, Bahag’s fate and forte with fencing is more like a closed chapter of his life. He has, however, a new-found love with biking. “I’m crazy with bicycles now,” he whole-heartedly admitted.
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
Considering how expensive and rare films are nowadays, I felt like a part of me died when he said that, “We never run out of films here [in Japan]. There is an unlimited supply that’s why I always shoot in film. You should go here. It’s like Disneyland or a land of cameras,” he enthusiastically chimed.
And just as I thought that I was maybe taking too much of his time, my conversation with Bahag delved deeper. He shared a trivia about how photography is epidemic in Japan—with 20,000 graduates every year. “I went crazy when I heard this! Think about how all these photographers are able to land a job,” he exclaimed.
Bahag also said, “People here are innovative. They have broader ways to earning through photography. For instance, there’s a personal photography project here that caters to families, wherein people would just phone the photographers for a shoot in the park for an hour’s session. We don’t have that in the Philippines, at least for now. Some people here [in Japan] hire photographers to go to their provinces, trace and their past lives, and document things with the use of their cameras. Here, you couldn’t run out of ideas or else other people would consume you.”
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
He usually spends his time going out to shoot, processing films, scanning negatives, and editing a bit. “Most of the time, I look at my photos and get sick of them right away, so I need to have my fix and shoot again. I think this is a sickness. I think I'm really going crazy,” he admitted.
Bahag also shared, “It’s really hard to pick which photographs I’m going to share. But today, I think my eyes have become more selective. And the thing is that when you put all these images together, they become the purest of their form. No pretensions. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed with today’s photographers. Some are too busy trying to be abstract or unique that they forget to visualize the real deal. To me, photography should be straight-forward: the classical approach like that of Bresson.”
From the time he started with photography, his style has consistently been honest: what you see is what you get. Today, Bahag is more confident and is not afraid to “get scolded.” Nothing’s right and nothing's wrong either. “In fact, everything’s right, just as long as you take photos,” he reiterated.
“As Leica put it, everybody can learn how to hold or use a camera but not everyone can have futuristic visions. You have to keep an open consciousness. If not, you will be missing out on a lot of things,” Bahag added.
Photography is the one permanent thing that keeps his lungs breathing. But if he were to live in a land where there are no cameras, he’d probably be painting or making something that’s related to agriculture. “If I were the intelligent type, I would have been in the engineering field, building something,” he told me.
The photographs he create may not be as gigantic as skyscrapers, but each picture he captures is a mirror to his soul and everyone else, friends and strangers alike, whose lives he touched. Bahag’s philosophy on photography is open-ended: a ray of line that doesn’t require an endpoint. He doesn’t plan on what to achieve next because to him, photography should be a never-ending experience. “It’s a never-ending learning process. You hone your eyes sharper. You develop a keener point of view. It’s like learning how to speak a new language; the more you talk, the more you become fluent,” he lectured.
To me, these details are what makes Bahag’s photography so admiring. He knows what he sees and he knows how to transform them into tangible memories. He is a man with visions and he is ready to make them happen one step at a time.
At the end of our conversation, Bahag left me with his ultimate goal: to be coined as the “Daido Moriyama of the Philippines.” Maybe it’s due to his strong leap of faith, but Bahag feels that he is really close to meeting his all-time favorite photographer, given the fact they’re pretty much living in proximity.
Personally speaking, I think he’s on the road to nailing this dream. Nothing’s going to stop a really dedicated person from achieving his goal, anyway. Bahag de Guzman is a master in the making!
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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| photo by Bahag de Guzman |
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