This exhibition is a cursory view of the presence of photography in the practice of artists, tracing the development of the medium over a relatively short period of time. This period begins with images by seasoned photographer Neal Oshima taken on visits to Bacolod at the time Orange Project was brewing in the minds of its founders. Retrieved and printed for the first time are randomly sequenced photographs of what appears to be sugar workers. “Negros Gothic” are women and men in costume holding farm tools in poses far removed from the actual narrative of Negros island, seat of feudal atrocities overshadowed by urbanization and contemporary lifestyles.

Resonating in the local and the particular are clichés of fellow documentarist Tommy Hafalla that capture in detail the changes within and misconceptions of ethnolinguistic communities that welcome him not simply as an observer but as community member. These are juxtaposed with self-taught photographer Jhundel Asunan’s casual cityscapes taken during night guard duty and intimate birthday photos. Their approach reveals the ubiquity of photography in the form of a snapshot. What may be considered as amateur or recreational becomes in no small measure our entry into art.

While artists engage with the everyday on the one hand, on another they avoid losing its uniqueness by producing images in single or limited editions, affirming the reproducibility offered by photographic technologies. Economic imperatives of art production pair comfortably with the artistic pursuits of Sonny Thakur who highlights food and the convivial setting of his own family’s kitchen and of Cru Camara who elaborates color for commercial and editorial assignments in her images of interiors and sentient beings

Postmodernity enters the happy experiments of Stephanie Frondoso, MM Yu and Faye Abantao. They adopt strategies of appropriation, preservation and recollection through alternative media. Nap Jamir’s single channel videos bridge the gap between the static and the moving image. Applying conventions of installation, printmaking and collage, they create painterly effects in the context of time and space.

Early photography is referenced by photograms indicating how, at the turn of the 20th century, painting was potentially eclipsed by the photograph as prints became a popular mode of pictorial representation. Today, LED screens and mobile phones increasingly replace the traditional ground and tool of photography. Regardless, what is striking about the artworks in this exhibition are their resounding aura and how a single image brings the discussion of photography back to itself – a drawing created through light.

We are attentive to such images not because of their physical properties but for their subject and what they represent. To engage with its content we look through these artworks like a “transparent envelope” (Barthes) instead of looking at them. Like light, photography is invisible. And it is this unassuming quality that allows photography to conjure new forms and stories in the age of digital reproduction. [Little did Oshima imagine his trip to Bacolod would reconnect him to the present.]

The enduring thread between the medium of photography and the fine arts is an ongoing renaissance.