Rick Rocamora's 25 years of activist photography

US-based Filipino documentary photographer Rick Rocamora has been likened to the legendary Americans Walker Evans and Dorothy Lange, Depression-era documentarians who portrayed America’s poorest of the poor with dignity and pathos. Generations later, Rocamora brought the same immortalizing treatment to the most impoverished in America’s Filipino community, aging World War II veterans. His black and white portraits have been exhibited in the Smithsonian in Washington DC and other prestigious museums and galleries in the US, Japan, England and, of course, the Philippines. Less known to his US audiences, a large part of his work has been shot in his homeland, where he has documented a wide range of subjects on his regular forays home since he began his second career as a photographer. GMA News Online is publishing a retrospective slide show of Rocamora’s work 25 years after he permanently shed his corporate suits and committed himself to telling visually compelling stories. Click here to view in full screen. Four decades ago, veteran lensman Rick Rocamora never pictured himself as a professional photographer. A political science student who dropped out in the 1960s, Rick Rocamora began his professional career in the corporate world and eventually worked in the United States. “I was in the pharmaceutical industry as a regional manager responsible for about $8 million of business a year," Rocamora says in an interview with GMA News Online. It was a random act by an activist priest in the 1980s that set him on the road to documentary photography – his work for the past 25 years, a retrospective of which Rocamora is exhibiting on GMA News Online. Then a priest of the Maryknoll congregation, Ed Gerlock, now a married man, offered to buy him a camera on one of his anti-Marcos speaking engagements in Hong Kong. Surmising that Gerlock simply wanted to share his hobby, Rocamora says, “That started it all." Changing careers From then on, Rocamora took not only business opportunities from his international trips, but also pictures of the landscape and people overseas. “I started thinking about changing careers," he says. But Rocamora qualifies, “It was more like, ‘This is something nice, taking pictures. But I’m not yet ready to give up my corporate life, because I’m making good money.’" The days before and after the 1986 People Power Revolution, however, changed the lens with which he viewed his future. Situated an ocean away from the masses mobilizing on EDSA, Rocamora felt his instincts as a long-time activist and a budding photographer kicking in. “Knowing something was happening and you cannot do anything as a photographer – that was very hard for me," Rocamora explains. His limited opportunities to participate in the anti-Marcos movement left Rocamora with a feeling of discontent. One event he made sure to document was the celebration of Filipinos at the Union Square in San Francisco, California, upon receiving news that the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos had stepped down. Shedding tears while taking photos, the activist said, “I could feel what it was to be liberated from Marcos." Also an advocacy In March 1986, Rocamora made a trip to the Philippines after 14 years of absence. He says his coverage of his homeland strengthened his conviction to pursue photography full-time, with him returning to the States with a “more dominant" drive to give up corporate life. “So finally in 1990, I quit corporate work and became a full-time photographer making less money," he says. Rocamora expresses no regrets about his decision. “I feel the work I’m doing is making some contribution to telling stories of my personal concerns, especially in the Philippines," says the photographer. Still based in the United States, Rocamora flies to the Philippines several times a year to cover his issues he cares about while doing commercial projects on the side. “My time in the Philippines is not to be a tourist but to be a serious documentarian of issues I am concerned about," he says. Digital exhibit For the past 25 years, his body of work has depicted a photographer who considers his craft not only as an art but also a social responsibility. Rocamora’s topics of interest range from children’s rights to the environment to the state of Moro refugees. “I’m not just an objective journalist. I’m also an advocate," he says. One of the most acclaimed Filipino photographers in the United States, Rocamora has earned accolades from the Asian American Journalists Association, the San Francisco Press Photographers Association, New California Media, and Media Alliance. He has also displayed his work at the Smithsonian Institution – the world’s largest museum and research complex – as well as other galleries in the United States and countries like the United Kingdom and Japan. “Rick Rocamora’s work belongs to the honorable tradition of documentary photography," says Sandra Phillips, senior curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in a review of the photographer’s landmark coverage of Filipino World War II veterans. Phillips lauds Rocamora for following in the footsteps of American documentary photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, who photographed rural communities hit by drought and poverty in the United States. “Like Lange, Rocamora focuses his attention on the people he wants us to look at and think about. These are ordinary people," Phillips says. “Rocamora reminds us, in these quiet and dignified pictures, of the value and integrity of these people, and of their strong sense of community-which sustains them, even as they suffer from careless neglect." Eli Reed, a photographer with the global cooperative Magnum Photos, meanwhile trains the spotlight on Rocamora’s “sensitive, straightforward, and respectable" manner of photography. Still referring to his coverage of World War II veterans, Reed says, “He doesn’t add unnecessary flourishes that might take you away from their story. He leaves you to understand that these images are about these men and not about him." His photos find their beauty, Rocamora explains, not in his cameras’ models or the quality of his technical skill. The activist photographer says, “It’s the point of view of the person behind the camera that dictates what you see." –PF/HS, GMA News