(This piece written by Bobby Timonera was first published in the book, “Transfiguring Mindanao: A Mindanao Reader,” edited by Jose Jowel Canuday and Joselito Sescon, published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and launched on June 22, 2022 in Davao City. It opens Part V on “Mediating Truths, Contested Communities, Making Peace.” Permission to share this with MindaNews readers was granted by the Ateneo University Press.)   I was born over a century after the beginnings of photojournalism, long after Roger Fenton first showed the world those cannonballs scattered on a dirt road during the Crimean War, and Mathew Brady and his team immortalized the soldiers of the American Civil War in various battlefields with their daguerreotypes.   By the time I took my first snap, it was with a camera so small compared to the large magical boxes and the mobile darkrooms Brady & Co. used to produce their images.   Pre-Photojournalism Years   I accidentally came across photography in my senior year in college when I volunteered at a non-government organization. The office had bought a camera—a single-lens reflex, or SLR—and nobody knew how to use it.   I was the youngest in the group, and I enjoyed tinkering. The task of using the fully mechanical, full-manual SLR naturally fell on me. Those cameras of yore, either you knew how to use them, or you didn’t. There was no middle ground, no point-and-shoot kind of luck. It was either you got a sharply-focused, correctly-exposed picture, or a blurry, dark as charcoal, bright as the clouds in the sky, or no picture at all. I was thus forced to read the instruction manual from cover to cover. With the internet still years away, and YouTube University farther still, the camera’s manual was my only source of information on everything about photography.

I enjoyed reading the instruction manual. For weeks, my mind was preoccupied with F-stops of aperture and the fractions of shutter speed, lingo that only photography enthusiasts could understand. I began to take decent pictures a few weeks later. I pursued the hobby after I left the NGO before my college graduation, borrowing one camera after another.   It was the mid-1980s, the golden years of Philippine photojournalism. It was shortly after Ninoy Aquino was killed on the tarmac, the student movement was in a resurgence, the workers were going on strike, the farmers were marching long distances in their protest actions, the communist and Moro rebellions were in full swing, Ferdinand Marcos was under attack and Cory Aquino was elevated to the presidency in the aftermath of the EDSA Revolt. I was in the middle of all these as a student activist. An activist’s natural path, if he were bent on bringing the issues out, is to be a journalist. And so I became a journalist, joining the “mosquito” press. In my case, I started working for a small news agency focusing on Mindanao issues, and worked my way up to the national dailies and the wire agencies.   News writing and photojournalism became my everyday life, but it was photojournalism that caught my fancy. I was amazed at the entire technical process, combined with the thrill that photographing events entailed. As luck would have it, a fellow Iliganon was already actively doing photojournalism in my hometown and neighboring areas. His family was close to mine, so I got to befriend him. We talked and talked about photography. Jojo Sescon became my mentor, and the books and magazines he lent me opened up the world of photojournalism to me, not to mention the camera he would let me use during coverages.   As my interest in photography grew, I took the next step any serious hobbyist would take: processing my films, and making my own prints. At that time, I was squatting in the makeshift darkroom of a commercial photographer, the kind who took ID pictures.   One day, Jojo brought to my place a second hand, rusty enlarger that he bought from somewhere and asked if I had a space for it. It had to be installed in a room that could be in total darkness, with good running water, hopefully good ventilation, preferably air-conditioned. No, I didn’t, but I had to find a place. To my surprise, my parents volunteered their bathroom to be my darkroom so I could process my films and make my prints right in my own home. What luck! But my parents’ bathroom didn’t have good ventilation, because of which I have suffered greatly, to this day. My preschool asthma, which didn’t manifest the whole time I was in school, recurred soon after I started doing darkroom work.

Spending for Our Own Gear   Unlike our brethren in Metro Manila under the employ of big and wealthy media organizations, photojournalists in Mindanao rarely find a news outfit, either local or national, that is willing to spend for the expensive equipment we need. Top-of-the-line cameras and fast lenses—every photojournalist’s dream— are expensive, more so with the advent of digital cameras that require combining the science of optics and the fast-paced developments in computer technology.   So we spend on our own gear, often happy with entry-level models. And if something happens to them during coverage, the cost is on us. We’ll just have to save or borrow money again, or find gigs that pay well, like weddings and commercial shoots.   When I started doing photojournalism in 1987, I was lucky that Jojo lent me his basic camera, with nothing but a normal lens. But I was lusting for the high-tech gear I saw in photo magazines that cost hundreds of dollars. Closer to home, I was one wide-eyed kid looking at the cameras at the newly-opened Gaisano Mall in Iligan, knowing for a fact that I couldn’t afford to buy myself a new camera.   But after a few months of coverage and saving all the money I got from the pictures and stories I submitted to the wire services, I was able to buy a used Canon from an OFW who was home on vacation.

Henceforth, all the cameras I have used for photojournalism were bought with my own hard-earned money. Not one camera, lens or flash came from the news organizations I have worked for over the decades.   I once damaged a borrowed camera during a shoot in Marawi. I had to spend for its repair.   Poor Pay   Because most Mindanao-based photojournalists are correspondents who work not as regular staff members and are paid according to our output, we often get very little for our pictures, not to mention the absence of benefits regular employees get, like bonuses and insurance.   In 2004, while doing a lucrative industrial shoot for one of Iligan City’s industrial plants, one of the photographers for the wire agencies called me up. Aware that wires would only call us promdi (as in “promdi” province) journalists when something bad happens around Mindanao, I jokingly asked: “So, what’s the bad news in Mindanao today?”   “There’s this foreigner who was kidnapped in your area. We heard he’s been released. Can you go out there and take pictures?”   “I’m in the middle of a commercial shoot, which, by the way, pays good money. How much will you pay me for that work?”   “Ouch! That hurts.”

I, of course, did not leave my work that day and proceeded with my shoot inside the factory. At that time, if memory serves me right, the wire agencies would pay PHP1,000 per photo used. They would rarely use more than one photo per event unless it was an earth-shaking story. If it’s your bad day, it could also happen that the wires won’t use any of your pictures at all. Thus, that assignment could be a zero for you, despite your effort and expenses. Whereas I was being paid PHP15,000 per day for that two-day industrial shoot.   Noble Debacle   In October 1990, Col. Alexander Noble and company attempted to mount a mutiny in Mindanao by seizing military camps in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Butuan. That, of course, was well publicized in the papers, and even merited an entry in Wikipedia.   What is probably not known to many was Noble and company’s movement in my hometown, Iligan City. A Google search now only mentions the involvement of 150 Scout Rangers who just showed support, but no action.   My memory is still vivid on the events of those few days.   First, we heard that a Sikorsky helicopter piloted by a Noble supporter landed at the Camp Pintoy reservists’ headquarters in Barangay Suarez, and that shortly after, a fighter plane loyal to the government hovered above the camp and sprayed the helicopter with machine gun fire, disabling it.   The camp is eight kilometers from my home. Public transportation was not easy as it was in a remote location. I didn’t have a car. But during those days, I often borrowed my brother Jong’s 50cc Honda scooter and drove it around town without a license. Jojo Sescon came with me. So off we went, riding in tandem, driving down the highway, maybe at a slow 20 or 30 kph, with me driving, and Jojo at my back. We were both without helmets, our large camera bags hanging from our shoulders. The small bike struggled on the slightly uphill road as we turned left from the highway. We finally got to the camp and took pictures. A 36-exposure roll of cheap YKL film was enough for this coverage.   To submit pictures of big, fast-breaking stories in those days, I would normally take the bus to Cagayan de Oro City, 90 kms away, then take a jeepney to the airport in Lumbia, about 11 kms uphill from downtown, from where I would send my raw, undeveloped rolls of film via PAL’s Speedpac service. Someone in Manila from the wires – Agence France-Presse or AFP in this case – would then pick it up in the airport. But because of the mutiny, all Mindanao- bound flights were cancelled.

What to do? We exerted so much effort for these pictures. Up to that point, I hadn’t seen pictures of the mutiny that were sensational or even just good enough. A disabled Sikorsky would surely hit Page One.   Then the good news came. Somebody I knew was leaving by boat for Cebu that evening, from where she would take the plane to Manila. She said she could hand-carry my precious roll of film. A day’s delay is bad for the fast-breaking world of the wires, which operate globally 24/7. But since no other pictures of the mutiny had gone out yet, the wires still wanted it.   I couldn’t dictate my friend’s itinerary, but she arrived in Manila in the evening. Factor in traffic, she got home in Cubao in Quezon City near Camp Aguinaldo at maybe 9 o’clock that night. As soon as I learned she was home, I called AFP (the news wire agency, not the military) and gave the office her address.   Off went the AFP’s driver, maybe with a photographer too, from somewhere in Ermita in Manila to Cubao. He knocked on my friend’s door, late at night. “Who’s there?!” “AFP!” “What?! Who?!” (She was thinking of the AFP, military, which made her panic after witnessing a series of coup attempts that could be seen and heard in the neighborhood.) “Can you just come back in the morning, please? There are old people here already asleep who will panic if they know that the AFP is knocking on our door.”   A miscommunication! The AFP crew left without the film. And they didn’t come back the next morning. Until now, I don’t know what happened to that roll of film; I haven’t even seen what my photographs looked like.   The following evening, I was in the middle of Tubod Bridge along the highway, with forces loyal to the government on the northern end, and Noble’s men on the other. Noble’s men said they just wanted to march towards the public plaza and rest there, with no plan to do harm. But the government forces wouldn’t budge.   Meantime, military bomb experts placed explosives and detonators by the side of the bridge so that should the rebel forces insist on forcing their way towards downtown, they would blow up the bridge in their bid to protect Iligan City.   I was running to and from both ends, eavesdropping on the negotiations. Events were being broadcast live over the local radio. My wife was home, and of course, she overheard the radio broadcast. She is Tagalog, but she had learned a little Cebuano after months of community medical work in Cebu and Iligan. When she learned what was happening, she was outraged and told my family to go out and take her husband away from danger.   The next day, the third day of the mutiny, when things had settled down but there were still a lot of soldiers downtown, she joined me in the coverage at the city public plaza, where the soldiers and the tanks were gathered, our one-year-old baby in her arms. “Whatever happens, sabay-sabay na tayo,” she said. Fortunately, nothing happened as Noble surrendered early the next day. (Bobby Timonera / MindaNews)   TOMORROW Part 2: MNLF Coverage in the Mountains, Firing Squad, Analog to Digital   (“Transfiguring Mindanao: A Mindanao Reader” has 34 chapters with 44 authors mostly coming from Mindanao covering broad topics from history, social, economic, political, and cultural features of the island and its people. The book is divided into six parts: Part I is History, Historical Detours, Historic Memories; Part II is Divergent Religions, Shared Faiths, Consequential Ministries; Part III is Colonized Landscapes, Agricultural Transitions, Economic Disjunctions; Part IV is Disjointed Development, Uneven Progress, Disfigured Ecology; Part V is Mediating Truths, Contested Communities, Making Peace; and Part VI is Exclusionary Symbols, Celebrated Values, Multilingual Future. Edited by Jose Jowel Canuday and Joselito Sescon, this book is a landmark in studies on Mindanao.)   Get your copy from the Ateneo University Press, Shopee, or Lazada. Watch the book launch here.  

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