"Where do you come from?"

In the way to Tondo, between the Pedro Gil PNR station and PNR Paco station, while walking around the railways, you'll always find someone to talk, specially in the shantytowns, where people never have the chance to share their life experiences with foreigners. 

And, again, they'll ask you for a photograph with the illusion of appearing in a newspaper or a magazine. Always with a smile. Always with a pose.

 

Sagada: Mountain Province

One day at the Rice Terraces

(To watch the video click here)

 

Photographs taken in Sagada, North Luzon. The Philippines, February 2009.

Children of the Smokey Mountain

For families around the Smokey Mountain, having children's was a way of getting more arms and hands to work as scavengers, in order to improve their income. Nowadays, mentalities have changed with the efforts of the many programs based around the former dump site to help residents of this area and parents are starting to be more willing to sacrifice them selfs to sent their kids to school. 

This photograph was taken in the surroundings of the former Smokey Mountain, officially closed more than a decade ago, where people still people scavenge for a living.

Kid at the Smokey Mountain, Tondo. Manila

The Lost Art

In the Kalinga region (North Luzon), the use of tattoos for body decoration, in case of women, and as a symbol of being a warrior, in case of men, was a very popular practice among tribes people but it's becoming a lost art.

This practice of drawing on the skin is performed using soot mixed with water and kisi needles.

The different patterns range from rinafarafat (fern-like), sinongchar (straight line), inob-ofog (mat-like), kinakadjaman (centipede-like), and minanmanuk (chicken-like).

This four photographs, taken in the villages of Chananau and Ngibat, represent some of the last tattooed women that are the living proof of this ancient art.

Albim Salamat, Former Smokey mountain Scavenger

Albim Salamat, 43 years old, was born in the Smokey Mountain and started to work as a scavenger when he was about 7 years old, and just stopped 30 years later. As he says, "I used to scavenge as a source to pay my studies".

It was the only way of getting money to study because "there was no timetable or shifts", and in the end of the day he could get the money to "pay the bills without having to wait for the end of the month".

Albim now works as Community Develop Worker in a program called "Out of School Youth" that consists in motivating teenagers to go back to school and try to finish theirs studies.

 

This picture is part of a series of shots taken in the Smokey Mountain, in Manila (The Philippines), which portrait the old dumpsite, the social housing and the new dumpsite.