Dumaguete in pictures looks very pretty, indeed, if those pictures were taken simply to showcase the photographer’s talent. Framing, the right aperture, the appropriate shutter speed, even the right lens used, in talented hands, will surely produce a nice photograph even if it doesn’t speak anything about its subject. Most of the photographs and even videos taken of places and people around the city do look wonderful. Sadly, even if you went to the exact spots from where those photographs were taken, you won’t see the subject in the same light as the photographer endeavored to convey. You will get the feeling that maybe you just missed the time when it looked beautiful.
People take photographs for many different reasons. Most of the time, photographs are taken to serve as souvenirs of segments of time in someone’s life; a reminder of how they looked, who they were with, what they did, in that distant time and place. The commonly taken photographs hardly depict the social conditions of a place at a point in time, unless the photographer had set out with such a purpose in mind. The subject of the common photograph is mostly always people or, if it were a place, a familiar one that is considered pretty. Hardly anyone sets out to take photographs of an impassable sidewalk, or of vendors who have set up their stands on a busy street; or of an electric pole sprouting out of a road lane; or of a faucet giving up a drop of water at full throttle; or of a police vehicle propped up on a sidewalk with hood open and tires removed; or a head-on shot of a two-lane street with four or even five lines of vehicles scrambling for their place in it. You won’t see these kinds of photographs because to most people they won’t mean anything. To them photographic subjects are people or beautiful places. The uninteresting and despicable images are reserved solely to augment news articles. Still some end up on social media as fodder for people’s curiosity.
I don’t know of any existing websites dedicated to Dumaguete that carry honest photographs as I have mentioned above. There might be one that I don’t know about. But if there isn’t, then there should be, so that they may be indexed by Google and therefore made available in searches online. I remember many times while I was away outside of the country when I felt nostalgic and wanted to see photographs of Dumaguete in the 1970’s to help me reminisce and soothe my homesickness. What I found were photographs that couldn’t be verified as belonging to that period or ones that clearly belonged to a time before I was even born. When I was young, I didn’t keep any such photographs so it’s probably my fault. Of course, today, keeping photographs portable, even in the thousands, is not a problem at all. I had to settle for photographs of more recent times that did not depict or did not even come close to depicting Dumaguete as we see it today, standing in its streets. So, coming home in retirement, meant a huge conflict between the visual and the stored images in my mind.
In time, all of what you see in the city will become common and unexciting. Nevertheless, images contain glimpses into the everyday struggles that go on in the city. They convey to us the hopes and aspirations of its people; their difficulties and the utter hopelessness that they must sometimes feel in the face of virtual neglect by the government. I would like to assemble, for posterity, a visual history of the city in the form of photographs even if it were just for me to look at as I struggle, in my golden years, to remember my time here. I want that history to be as vivid as when it was lived and witnessed by us at those very specific times.
I hope to convey to everyone that it’s never a waste of time to snap pictures of the city itself, in its bold nakedness, if only to help others, who may need to see their city just as they would see it if they were here. In all the times that I felt homesick, I would have paid to see pictures of the Dumaguete of my youth. For some reason that you would know if you’ve also been away for decades, only those specific photographs would cure that feeling. And then, when I began to contemplate retirement here, I wish I could have seen photos of my city as I would see it now, here.
Dumaguete is like a lady who would very much like to flaunt her beauty but only when she was absolutely sure that she looked perfectly beautiful. She doesn’t even need to go by someone else’s standards–only her own. But she cannot begin to make herself beautiful if she doesn’t know the parts that she must fix. Dumaguete, like the lady, needs our help to be truly beautiful. We must help her see those parts of her that are less desirable so that she may fix them. We can do that by taking and sharing photographs of her before, in the hopes of seeing, preferably in our lifetime, her after.
From showing the way it was to the way it is, photographs are never wrong. They will continue to be irrefutable testaments to the way we were in our past and, hopefully, a window into our tomorrow.
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