FUTURE PERFECT: Sure realism

MANILA, Philippines - Geloy Concepcion has a trick. Through the mostly grainy monochrome photos of his travels, from the mountains of Hanoi down to Siem Reap and Bangkok, there’s a fact that most people don’t see: he’s not even shooting in film. “It’s a photo documentary trick. Black and white has high impact, and that’s how I want it,” he reveals. It is also a trick that has made his work worthy of inclusion in the incredible platform that is Invisible Photographer Asia. In University of Santo Tomas, where he took up Advertising, he didn’t even start in the darkroom, and he was the last to have a camera in his class. But before Concepcion even graduated, he was off to the highly selective Angkor Photo Workshops in Cambodia.

Concepcion is part of a new generation of photographers — not the vapid Tumblr types who just obliviously laze around in their lace dresses and bokeh lenses — who are into documentary photography. He adds, “Photography, really, is just part of my art. When I went to those places, it’s really for life, not just for photography.” His life has been closer than close to reality. He has documented the Black Nazarene procession as a barefoot devotee himself. In his native Pandacan, Manila, he grew by the railway amidst gang riots and people being shot dead during fiestas. “It’s like a little Tondo, like City of God,” he says. One of his paintings is from a still taken of this 2002 Brazilian crime film.

When he had the chance to get out all of it through traveling, he ended up with a new project: “It’s about being a prodigal son — that wherever you go, you’ll still come back home.” Tokyo through his eyes isn’t the tourist city that people fantasize about. After he exhibited in its Ricoh Ring Cube Gallery last year, what he took home were desolate frames of the city lost in its own flux and mirrors. He relates, “You see that it’s something we don’t have in the Philippines, but they’re all work, and they lack human bonds.”

Concepcion’s photographic work, as much as it is reportage, also offers personal insight as the information is reflected upon vis-a-vis his life and the communal Filipino experience. This March, he is coming up with his first solo exhibit as the final output of his artist residency in Casa San Miguel. “It’s called ‘Resbak,’” he shares, “like I’m getting back at the people from where I grew up in.” He’s showing spray paintings on reclaimed wood, a continuation of his graffiti work, which brought him to the international Wall Lords competition in Taiwan the other year. How he keeps it real — it’s all from experience, no trick to that.

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