"Lens" Cebu Press Freedom Week photo exhibit

CEBU, Philippines — Gone are the days when “photo stories” are taken solely for reportage, what with advances in photography standards and imaging tech dynamizing photojournalism into an artistic medium.

This aspect of photojournalism is the convening variable of an ongoing exhibit at the ground floor level of Robinsons Galleria Cebu which features photographs by Cebu’s award-winning photojournalists.

Titled “LENS” and presented by LENS (the Cebu organization of photojournalists) with the support of Cebu Pacific Air and Robinsons Galleria Cebu, the show is part of the highlights of this year’s “Cebu Press Freedom Week” celebration.

Running until September 23, the exhibit is made complete by landscapes and human interest photos which the exhibiting photographers have taken over the years – stills of action-packed scenes that are framed by a photojournalist’s viewfinder.

In this show, viewers get a glimpse of how seasoned news documenters see the world – their unabridged views on the world’s beauty and wonders, so to speak.

Free from action-packed images that typically land on the front pages of newspapers, the exhibit’s ‘calming’ take on picturesque scenes doubles as a platform where different places in the Visayas region are framed in a novel light – reminding everyone that beauty is everywhere, contrary to the presumption that it is already hard to find nowadays.

It’s long been said that there’s more to photography than “here’s an image, so look at it”; that effective photography is all about telling a story.

In the “LENS” exhibit, the exhibiting photographers share various tales by effectively using light to tell a story – actively standing by photography’s moorings as the art that “draws with light.”