How could Filipinos divorce their lives from water? Several thousand islands that both grant us identity and acquaint us with distance—even from those in the same country. Our people ferried on boats, traveling to the city and back. Skies that constantly reflect the blue shimmer of sea. Problems of too much water, and too little. Floods and tsunamis that leave people, ironically, without water to drink. There is the water of territory, which pits us against geopolitical giants; and there is the day-to-day water—the refilling stations, the coin laundries, the garden hoses—the water of festivals where citizens leave soaked, and the unity & discord of doing such in the dense Metro. 

To ask a Filipino to speak about water is to ask them to speak about their lives. To photograph it is not simply to shoot landscape, but to share the secret of what a people of water sees in their sleep. It is not a question of infrastructure, but one of ritual and spirit—paniniwala at pamahiin. It is not real estate pictures of homes by the sea, but the arrangement of furniture that makes space for when the rainwater seeps through our doors. 

Sa Dulo ng Dalampasigan means the extent of our shores. And this exhibit is proof that such a place is washed over—blurred beneath a countrywide surf. That there is little distinction between what is shore and what is not—that it is almost like looking out at the blue, and determining where the ocean becomes horizon, and where horizon becomes sky. 

Truly, where does the shore end? Does it end where the mystics walk? A patch of grass from which a girl views a sunset? Do the fishermen take the shore with them as they trudge home from a day at sea? Or what about a building—or even just a wall—clearly weathered and yellowed by flood and rainwater? Or artisans repainting the fishing boats, etching into our journeys some sense of self—because in the sea, it is only the fisherman, their boat, and perhaps the more than 50 Filipino deities that have to do with water? 

If these were questions we could answer concisely, perhaps there would be no need for photography. But the one certain thing is that Filipinos view water through a unique and incomparable lens. And this collection of photographs only deepens the mystery of where the extent of our shores lies. In our cities? In our homes? In our dreams or hallucinations? In our disparate but altogether Filipino souls? It is less an answer and more of an invite. It is infinite fingers pointing in infinite directions and saying: Ayan ang Dulo ng Dalampasigan. Magkita tayo doon. 

Words by Gian Lao and Nicole Soriano-Lao