If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much…
– Rudyard Kipling, “If”
Initially, you wouldn’t know what to make of him. He appeared to be some Japanese straggler in mismatched cap, oversized jacket, baggy pants and gym bag slung over his shoulder. He was always smiling, always welcoming. Why was he smiling? Was he crazy? No. On the contrary, he knew the secret of life. He was happier than us all.
Tony Lu started as a regular basketball fan, trying to get tickets for PBA games back in the 1970s. Eventually, he would ask players if he could carry their bags into Araneta Coliseum so that he could watch games for free. And they happily did. One day, someone gifted him a little plastic camera, the kind tourists and ordinary people used. He thought that he could take pictures of the players and teams he admired so much. This is how the world would come to know Tony Lu.
Eventually, he would point and click his way to fame. He took pictures of everybody, from presidents and prime ministers to actors and athletes. From ordinary people to the world famous, he was the only photographer I knew who had photos of himself with all of those celebrities. Soon, everybody knew about Tony Lu. It was unbelievable that he would have photos of himself with luminaries like President Fidel Ramos, Jackie Chan, Wang Zhizhi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, politicians, entertainers and every major athlete in the basketball world and beyond. And of course, he blew up and framed PBA, PBL and other team photos for small amounts. Sadly, many, many times, he was never paid.
Through the charity of friends and sponsors, he got to travel the world. He was even able to visit his children in North America, but never wanted to live there. The Philippines was home.
Everywhere he went it was like he was showing you around his hometown. He belonged, and there were times when other sports photographers resented it. Tony had a gift of making people comfortable around him. He engaged in conversation, made us feel at ease, disarmed everyone and truly knew people, to the point that people knew of him by name, particularly because of the series of snapshots called “Lu-king Good” that he consistently had in various sports magazines for decades. He was, before the Internet, everywhere, ubiquitous, as if he was mayor of the world.
Lu resisted technology, insisting in using film far past the advent of CDs and digital devices. He joined the rest of the world only when it became inescapable. He was unrepentantly happy with the way things were, and didn’t see the need to change them.
Tony lived a simple life in a deteriorated little apartment in Caloocan. He slept downstairs because he believed his deceased mother haunted the second floor. Every space was filled with hundreds of thousands of pictures and negatives in disarray. There was no layout, no organization. Remarkably, he seemed to know where everything was, no matter how long ago. Typhoons did severe damage to his ceiling, soaking his priceless collection, irretrievably destroying so many memories and historical moments. If only he had digitized them.
Why will we miss Tony Lu? He was the simplest, purest spirit among us in the media, in sports, never taking anything too seriously, even when he most needed our help. He preserved our best moments, our milestones, our memories. He loved his job, and made everybody happy. We paid little attention, thinking he would be there forever. Now, we will have to be content with old photographs of the genial, generous mayor of the world. He will never fade away.