So Far Away: My close encounters with the Taong Grasa of Dagupan

A Photo Exhibit by Ed Sevilleja
Exhibit Notes by: Kaye O'yek, Manila

Ed Sevilleja’s collection of photographic images in SO FAR AWAY portrays different images of the street vagrants of his hometown, Dagupan City. This assortment of candid portraits, called Mga Taong Grasa ng Dagupan by the multi-awarded photographer, started in 2006 as a side project that centered on these oft-neglected personalities mocked or ignored in the peripheries of functioning society, providing close encounters that common passersby rarely ponder on. They are there, and they are smelly, filthy, and out of it, and so what? We see them and we continue on our way through the humdrum rhythms of our daily lives.

Finally presenting his Mga Taong Grasa ng Dagupan to the public in SO FAR AWAY, Sevilleja exhibits the personalities he encountered roaming the town streets with his favorite lens. In doing so, and choosing the most striking pictures that create a visual narration of poverty, hunger, detachment and deprivation, he forces us to take a second look, evoking not pity but empathy, grabbing a few minutes of our attention and letting these images burn indelible imprints on our consciousness before we go back to our collective apathy.

By focusing his viewfinder on these individuals, the photographer captures various characters in their natural state, freezing un-posed instances with his camera. In Takeout, the taong grasa seems to be beckoning, offering scavenged food from a popular fast food chain. Kama depicts a grease man lying on bare cement, apparently resting from exhaustion or as an escape from reality. Kodak is a picture of a playful mirroring of the photographer in action. Istrol shows us a woman walking the streets in broken rubber sandals and utter nonchalance, comforted by a cigarette in her hand. In Buyangyang, easily the most revealing portrait of the lot, Sevilleja chooses to print his image in wallet size and let the audience peer through it a few meters away within the exhibition space and see the details of the picture through a telescope, defining the concepts of distance and intimacy.

Using a telescopic lens to capture most of the images, Ed Sevilleja keeps his distance from these seemingly unstable subjects because of the risk of physical harm, but his interest for his Mga Taong Grasa ng Dagupan nevertheless fuels his passion for pursuing the project and being on alert each time for that click-worthy moment only determined by a sharp eye for irony and aesthetics. With these portraits on photographic paper, Sevilleja affords us a way of seeing things from different perspectives, from realities close but still so far away from our own. In introducing these characters, he lets us dip our toes into their proverbial vessel of consciousness without total bodily immersion, creating visual confrontation against our own sensibilities without going into hyperbolic dramatization or psychology. The lines in the faces are enough, the images speak for themselves, and we are mere witnesses.