Estan Cabigas

My new photo portfolio subsite where stories focused on faith and spirituality are posted through slideshows

Since 2005, I’ve been documenting Filipino Catholic religious events and activities. Over the years, I have amassed several images that have lain in my DVD backups and hardrive with some finding their way into my other blogs on travel, a photoblog and a few, into this portfolio site.

Why am I documenting these? Two reasons:

• It’s an attempt to record age old practices that are in danger of disappearing or changing in the future or architectural treasures that are constantly being disregarded and altered. I had this concern that in a few years time, we will lose this rich cultural heritage.
• I’m trying to look deep into myself, into my faith and try to find why I seem to be losing it due to questions and doubts.

Regarding the first reason, I may not be an anthropologist but I want to contribute through an approach that I know best: documentary photography. From 2005 to the present, the type of stories I have been doing are limited to religious events.

As early as last year, I was already looking for something to do as my personal long term project but was concerned that the religious stories I have are mainly seasonal. Then came my “A Ritual of Faith” work, my main portfolio for my Diploma in Photojournalism course. Doing this story was sort of liberating. It was quite fulfilling and made me realize that faith is not only limited to specific times of the year or events but is a daily occurence or practice that can be documented on a regular basis!

I felt inspired and it was during this state of mind that I thought of putting into one section, specifically a subsite to my photography portfolio a repository of the stories that I have done or is continually doing. In this way, I can keep track of this Pagtu-o or Faith project.

Right now, I’m going over my images and preparing photo stories that I will then post later. Over at the Pagtu-o site are now four photo stories with free and downloadable ebooks. More to come.

I will be posting soon at my other blog the details of the concept and design as well as some technical aspect of the blog that is used as a portfolio site.

Tags: faith, website