A Villa in Manila

A mix of images and video I shot for the Wall Street Journal. Brings back many good memories...

          

Full story and all the photos.

Paeng Nepomuceno

Before Manny Pacquiao, there was another multi-world-champion Filipino. Rafael "Paeng" Nepomuceno, from Manila, has won the World Cup of Bowling four times. He won it in three different decades and is the youngest bowler to have won it (at age 19). He is considered the greatest bowler of all times. The Michael Jordan of bowling.

Paeng Nepomuceno training in Manila      © Nacho Hernandez

More photos of the Philippines in my website.

Manila North Cemetery

Sunset at Manila North Cemetery, its biggest and one of its oldest. Home to thousands of families and a million of souls. The living among the dead.

© nacho hernandez 2014, all rights reserved

Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital: The busiest maternity ward in the world

© nacho hernandez 2014, all rights reserved

The maternity ward at the Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila is dubbed the "baby factory" for a reason. It is considered the busiest maternity ward in the world, with more than one hundred deliveries every day. As many as four or five exhausted mothers and their newborn babies often share double beds in an open space that oddly does resemble more a factory plant than a maternity.

© nacho hernandez 2014, all rights reserved

The Philippines, with a population of almost one hundred million, has one of the highest birth rates in Asia and could double its population in three decades.

The Philippines Supreme Court recently declared constitutional the Reproductive Health (RH) bill approved last year. Thus, it ended a long tug of war between the government and the very influential Catholic Church which in the past went as far as threatening President Aquino with excommunication if such a law was ever passed. This law aims to provide family planning education and access to birth control to those Filipinos who didn't have it in the past for cultural, religious or economic reasons.

© nacho hernandez 2014, all rights reserved

© nacho hernandez 2014, all rights reserved

© nacho hernandez 2014, all rights reserved

Manila American Cemetery

The Manila American Cemetery is the biggest American military cemetery outside of the US. Over 17,000 soldiers from the Pacific war rest there.

It is also, probably, the best taken care of park in the country.

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

The Catholic Church in the Philippines

The French journal Le Monde published recently some of my photos about the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

Although during the Holy Week the catholic fervor is particularly evident, it is also very present during the whole year.

It is estimated that 80% of the Filipino population is Catholic, making it the third biggest Catholic community in the world. In the Philippines the Church is still extremely influential, not only in the day to day life of the Filipinos, but also at the political level.

Many more photos from the Catholic Church in the Philippines in my website.

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

Speakeasy

In a recent, fun assignment for the Wall Street Journal, I had to photograph a cocktail bar in Makati, the Blind Pig, for an article on speakeasy bars in Asia.

Speakeasies were created during the prohibition in the US. Hidden, you could only access them if you were in the know and  informed about on which door to knock. A slot in that door would then open and a guard would decide if you were allowed into the sanctum or not.

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

Today, some cocktail bars recreate that speakeasy environment. This comes as a nice surprise in a city like Manila -in my view, the noisiest in the world- as clients are also expected to be quiet inside.

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

The biggest challenge shooting this assignment was that the Blind Pig is very, very dark, and flash photography is not allowed (which is, by the way, also a great idea). Therefore I had to go for the blurry and out of focus effect so in vogue these days (the fact that I "had to" try a few of their delicious concoctions may have also helped with the out of focus effect). I blame their fantastic barman, Tog, pictured above.

Slasher Cup: Cockfighting in the Philippines

A banner at the top of the Araneta coliseum in Manila reminds us that this place was home to one of the most epic fights in history: The "Thrilla in Manila" that in 1975, for the third and final time, brought face to face Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to fight for the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World. The cocky but totally exhausted Ali prevailed, after the coach of a heavily punished and almost blind Frazier stopped the fight before the 15th and last round.

These days other fighters, cocky in their own way, engage in a no-prisoners combat at the same venue. During the World Slasher Cup, the Olympic Games of cockfighting, hundreds of fights take place in a pit almost identical to a boxing ring.

As each fight is about to start, the shouting among the Kristos or betters starts to go in a crescendo until it becomes generalized yelling in the arena. The roosters are given the go. They study each other for a few seconds. Then a flash, a cross or two of their sharp blades, feathers flying around and the fight is over, one of them biting the dust.

Next fight.

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

Manila skyline

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

Ominous sky.

The Year of the Dragon

© nacho hernandez, all rights reserved

Chinese New Year in Binondo, Manila, the oldest Chinatown in the world.

Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Manila 6 AM

© nacho hernandez

"If you can smell the street by looking at the photo

... it's a street photograph". - Bruce Gilden

Binondo, Manila's Chinatown              © nacho hernandez

People Power (in the Philippines)

Filipinos claim the "copyright" to people power revolutions. These days, as we watch dictators in Northern Africa fall one after another like domino pieces (cliche!), they seem to be thinking "been there, done that". Last Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the EDSA revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Filipinos came out "en masse" to celebrate. 

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

New colors

I have made some changes to the design my photography website. The main one is its color. Or maybe I should say its lack of color. Or, more correctly, the sum of all colors at the same time. Anyway, white is the new black ...

I hope you will enjoy it.

Dragons and bunnies

At the Chinese New Year celebrations in Manila, today.
Happy year of the rabbit!

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

A cockfight convention

The First World Gamefowl Expo, at Manila's World Trade Center of all places. So much testosterone in the air you could cut it with a knife.

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

Sunday afternoon at the mall (Guns & Roses)

© nacho hernandez

© nacho hernandez

Filipinos love malls. They are at the center of their daily life. Huge malls in Manila attract clients by the thousands, with the promise of anything they might need: cafes, restaurants, shops, churches, movie theaters, clinics, massage parlors, convention centers. Malls have also brought the "democratization" of air conditioning, with many families spending the whole day at the mall, specially on week-ends.

Yesterday, while visiting the Mall of Asia (the fourth biggest in the world), I started to bump into people dressed up as manga characters. It turns out there was a "manga convention" (probably not the right term) going on.

The guns were fake, and so were the roses.

Des évangéliques version catho

Courrier International

Pardon my French. That was the title of the article published last week in the French weekly magazine Courrier International, illustrated with my photos of the El Shaddai religious group in the Philippines. The photos were actually shot on assignment for The Wall Street Journal a few months ago.

Which reminds me of a golden rule for freelance photographers. My very first photography teacher was obsessed with this rule. A few years later, a photography legend with whom I took a workshop, repeated the same rule again and again, like a Buddhist mantra: "Always own your photos".

Sam and David are great teachers and with them I learned (I hope) much more than this, but this lesson by itself would have been worth it. Always keep the copyright to your photos. They are your future, your legacy as a photographer and, like in this case, you never know when you will be able to sell them again.

The New Green Revolution

Asian Geographic recently published (issue no. 74) a story I shot for them at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), near Manila. The text is by the excellent Filipino writer Claire Maneja (full disclosure: my better half). Team work.

In the newsstands (in Asia) now.

After the storm

Typhoons are part of Filipino life. The first one of the season, Conson, crossed the Philippines last week, on its way towards the South China Sea. Only its fringes touched Manila but that was enough to leave us without electricity for over 24 hours. Airports and schools had to close too. In the provinces where it hit harder the death toll has reached seventy people, with over eighty missing. Many of them were fishermen caught in the sea.