Batasan

I haven’t had the chance to take real photos for quite a while now; school has, unfortunately, taken up much of my time. But I still remember the good old college days when we were required to take some shots for Photo Journalism class, and there was one assignment that I was really happy that we were.

“Sampayan”, which is Tagalog for “clothesline”, was the assignment for the week. We were pretty much novices in handling an SLR, a film camera at that–but my friend and PhotoJourn partner and I wanted to do something that wasn’t quite as fleeting or an art for grade’s sake.

I’d like to share those photos with you especially as I find it more meaningful now that I’ve seen some of my fellow Filipinos and San Mateo residents living on the streets, off the Batasan-San Mateo bridge to be precise, and begging for food or money just to get through the day after the recent monsoon floods ravaged their houses–which were already tattered shelters made from discarded wood from the start but were, nonetheless, homes to most of them.

The people in the shots actually lived under that Batasan bridge. These were taken with an Olympus OM-10 on January 2008, before Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana), the recent calamity, and everything else that has happened in between. I remember them saying that they were always nervous when rain starts to pour because then they’ll have to find somewhere else to flee to and leave what little they do have. I pray that they’ll get their silver linings soon.