Who was Teodulo Protomartir?

This story started with just a single camera-- a Kodak folder from the 1930’s.

The camera that started it all.

At the end of our production of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" two years ago, my special effects supervisor, Peter Chuidan told me that he just saw an old camera in one of the SwapMeet stalls in Kamuning. Everybody I work with knew by then that I could not resist checking out an old camera. The very next day, I went to Kamuning. In the helter skelter of discarded household decors and ornamental knick knacks inside Sir George’s stall, I found the camera. Sir George, the owner of the shop, said the camera was owned by the father of Philippine Photography. He mentioned the name, but it did not ring any bells. I was expecting to hear the name of the Vitugs, the Razons, the Peraltas -- very familiar names that I had encountered when I was collecting anecdotes about New Society Photo Supplies' owner, Albert Strong , who for me, is the Godfather of Philippine Photography in the 70’s.

Sir George, the owner of SwapMeet on Kamuning.

Back to the camera. It was very small and worked only with 828 paper-backed roll film. Inside the camera was an empty metal reel. On the back cover of the camera, a sheet of paper with minute inscriptions was pasted. The inscriptions were faded, and looked like some hieroglyphs. Later, at home, I realized that they were, upon careful inspection, a guide to exposure with experimental combinations of aperture and shutter speeds. I cleaned the camera but did not touch the inscriptions, and then hid it in a box. Fast forward to a week ago. I was taping an episode of "Bitoy’s Funniest Videos" right in front of the SwapMeet in Kamuning. During the break, I crossed the street to visit the shop. There were no cameras for sale. Sir George said cameras are quite rare now. He remembered me, and showed me a pile of old photographs. I flipped through the photos which were carefully inserted in protective plastic envelopes. I saw a night shot of Avenida Rizal showing the marquees of the downtown theatres, and Anak Dalita was showing at the Dalisay theatre. I have been collecting pictures of old theatres which are not there anymore. I asked him who took the photo. And he mentioned that name again, followed by the honorific, Father of Philippine Photography. Then Sir George showed me an album with original black and white prints of different scenes around Manila from the 1930’s to the 50’s. They were pictures that fall under what modern photographers call street photography: children selling paper bags to shoppers around pre-war Plaza Miranda, policemen inspecting old style cars parked in front of Cine Metropolitan at the back of Quiapo Church, urchins running across the newly built bridge along R. Hidalgo near the corner of Arlegui, children playing at the beach in front of Dewey Boulevard, a Malate girl selling vegetables from a kaing… and all the photos have technical notes at the back: what film was used, which developer (Dr. Sease developer), what lens (all Leica mount lenses, some very rare) at which aperture. So who is this man? Who is Teodulo Protomartir? Sir George was a bit round-about in giving me answers. Mr. Protomartir had been dead for years now. His last photos were taken in the 70’s. I wanted to know more. But Sir George was more concerned about his difficulty in making copies of the photographs direct from the old, and now crumbling negatives. Some shops refused to scan the negatives because they were too brittle… and somebody even suggested to him that the large format negatives were already useless because they didn’t fit into their scanners. I immediately rushed to Jay Javier’s Fotofabrik studio which is just a stone's throw away from Kamuning. We rushed back and I showed him into the shop. “I have 30,000 photographic negatives, I don’t know how I can save them", Sir George sighed. Jay inspected some of the negatives. “Vinegar syndrome," he said after smelling the negatives. He’s the expert, and he was worried. We decided that something was to be done. We volunteered to scan all the negatives and clean them digitally. Once that was agreed upon, Jay and I became more relaxed and pored over the other albums. In one album, there were about 20 photographs of a young Teodulo Protomartir and a group of young photographers like him in what was evidently a photographic walkabout. And they were all proudly wearing 2-toned shoes and on their necks were rangefinder cameras. It was the 30’s, 35mm film was fairly new, and these young photographers were pioneering something that went against the norm, when large format cameras were the accepted tools of the medium. In one of their sorties, Protomartir in impeccable white is seen clambering up a wall of rocks and scribbling the name of their group… 35mm Club Manila. One of the last photos of Protomartir was taken in the 70’s, before his death. In the photograph, he is shown waiting for the correct lighting condition, and he is lying on a raft, beside his favorite rangefinder cameras, while a light meter hangs on his chest like a medal.

Protomartir in one of his last photographs, sometime during the 1970's.

Visit the exhibit: BEING THERE 1946: The Legacy of Teodulo Protomartir Silverlens Gallery 2320 Pasong Tamong Extension, Warehouse 2, Yupangco Building June 9 to July 3, 2010.