Of course, its no revelation to say that popular news and media focus disproportionately on the “bad” – after all, this is what sells; it’s what people consider to be “news” and therefore want to hear about. But it’s worth considering while we read our papers or watch our TV bulletins the impact this disproportionate focus has on the countries (particularly “developing” countries) that inevitably end up with bad press. The photojournalist who led the street photography class I took early on in my placement explained that she left journalism because the major newspapers and magazines were only interested in photos of disasters and poverty in her country. She wanted the opportunity to show the world that there was much more than that to the Philippines, however, this is a hard task given the strength of stereotypes created by global media. For the Philippines if a positive picture is painted it’s invariably one of the cheery outlook of the population in the face of the huge problems they face – which isn’t really much better than the negative picture. It’s not just news media that’s the culprit either – the advocacy and funding campaigns of charitable organisations, academic books that discuss international development issues and even well-meaning travel bloggers all have a tendency to overplay difficulties, disasters and exoticism in the “developing world” in a way that can have a large impact not only on the way people from the outside see a country, but also on the way it’s own citizens do as well. I’m sure I’m guilty of this myself – after all, I spend a lot of time on this blog writing with a focus on cultural differences and development issues.

“Responsible” is a bit of a buzz word these days, applied to all sorts of things from tourism to banking to consumerism to pie. But while overuse brings a bit of a danger of diluting its meaning, I still think the need for responsible journalism has never been more apparent than in our current, “postmodern”, increasingly interconnected world. And this isn’t just about ethical guidelines for stalking David Beckham, or whether or not people should be exposed to distressing images of old ladies throwing innocent cats in rubbish bins. It’s about having some consideration for and understanding of the way that global coverage of international issues can impact on those issues, on development and on a country’s capacity to empower its citizens. The Philippines has its problems, of course, and its important to be honest about what they are. However, it’s also important to be clear that the Philippines is not just a “land of typhoons and shootings”, just as Africa, a continent that has suffered a huge amount of misrepresentation and stereotyping in popular media, is not (to coin a term from Wronging Rights) a “land of rape and lions”.

For those who are interested, this video – How Not To Write About Africa – makes the point far better than me.

Livelihood

In rural areas, farming for sale or subsistence is the main and often the only livelihood option for families. While the farming industry in the Philippines is still a large sector of the economy, it has retracted recently with many rural families adversely affected. Unsustainable farming practices have also impacted the productivity of farming, typhoon damage can ruin whole crops, and there are few other options for people to turn to for support. Education is also more difficult to access and illiteracy is much higher than in the cities.

In urban areas it would be easy to be fooled into thinking that employment is easier to come by. The shining skyscrapers and upmarket malls of business district Makati seem to suggest a thriving economy, however good jobs are concentrated in the hands of very few, and the “familial” nature of local culture means that access to these jobs is very much based on an “old boys network” of family connections. Many Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies have begun to move their operations to the Philippines to take advantage of the large number of English-speaking unemployed, and the Philippines is now second only to India in terms of the size of this market, however jobs here are limited to those with a strong educational background and are unlikely to be accessible to those who have moved to the cities from rural areas. Most of the urban poor are engaged in the large informal economy, meaning they still can’t access government benefits or social security, with those who can’t make ends meet here reduced to scavenging through rubbish heaps for things to eat or sell. But even this “market” has become competitive because of the continually growing urban population, and scavengers now have to fight with others who wish to exploit the same “patch”.

Housing

In rural areas, many buildings are still constructed from traditional materials – bamboo, coconut palm leaves etc. – using traditional methods. These are more vulnerable to degradation and typhoon damage, but easier and cheaper to repair than those made from concrete bricks and corrugated iron sheets. Space is a commodity far more readily available in the countryside, and the air is free of the pollution rife in large cities like Metro Manila.

In the cities, those who cannot afford their own homes (approximately 50% of the population of Manila) live in slums scattered all over the city, called locally “squats”. Squatter areas are notorious for their crowded, cramped conditions, with poorly constructed shelters made from corrugated iron sheets and plastic tarpaulins piled up on top of each other. Crime, fires and vandelism are all well known ills in the city squats, but forcible evictions organised by the government (usually for cosmetic rather than social or developmental reasons) often do more harm than good as they are rarely accompanied by adequate relocation programmes. Many families end up living and sleeping on the streets because they have nowhere else to go.

Health and Sanitation

In the rural areas, any kind of healthcare is difficult to access because of the remoteness of many communities and the distances needed to travel to reach medical facilities. Particularly in the rainy season, roads become impassable and whole communities can become stranded.

In the cities, there are hospitals and doctors close at hand, however the cost of accessing these services put them out of the league of the vast majority of the urban poor, who must instead rely upon charitable aid where it is available. This is deeply problematic as the urban poor suffer massively from health and sanitation problems linked to the intense overcrowding and pollution in squatter areas. Disease is common and spreads quickly through communities – a lot of the disabled I work with are childhood polio sufferers who could not access healthcare because of the costs involved.

Natural Disaster

The Philippines, like most of the Asia-Pacific countries, suffers greatly from natural disasters like typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. These affect all areas of the country, and recovery can take many months, if not longer. In rural areas there is little or no support infrastructure to deal with the damage caused by typhoons and floods and many families cannot afford to rebuild homes that have been destroyed, or to supplement lost income and food from crops that have been ruined. Electricity brownouts resulting from large storms can last for days and the many unpaved roads will often be unusable for the whole of the rainy season, making aid access difficult.

In the cities, the infrastructure is also inadequate to support the needs of those affected by natural disasters, and the dangers, particularly of flooding, are augmented by the cramped, overcrowded squats and the lack of any adequate means for rubbish disposal. Streets quickly become impassable even in a light rainstorm because of blocked drainage systems. Electricity brownouts are also common. These can have a greater impact because of the increased reliance on electricity in urban areas, but are generally not as lengthy and many of the larger malls have back-up generators, although heading to the mall for some temporary relief is an option really restricted to those on the richer end of the poverty spectrum.

Town Mouse, Country Mouse?

Life in the cities is markedly different to life in rural areas, but while the standard of living might not ultimately be higher, the idea of accessing waged employment and the trappings of modern life more readily available in the cities are a big draw for many rural Filipinos from a cultural point of view. As more and more people migrate to the cities, the problems of overcrowding, sanitation and unemployment will continue to worsen, but the idea of returning to the countryside again is unlikely to appeal in part because of these cultural associations and the different lifestyles associated with different areas. The challenge for development projects in the Philippines then, like in so many other developing countries, is not to focus solely on standards of subsistence and economic capital, although these are obviously vital, but to give consideration simultaneously on how to provide the poor with the social and cultural capital they need and desire in order to feel a part of their rapidly changing society, whether or not they choose to live in the town or in the country.

Yes, its yet another slightly twisted Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated) clone (albeit slightly less ridiculously demanding as you get to set your own goal as long as it’s vaguely web series related). There are a lot of them about these days – you may have just missed JulNoWriMo (July Novel Writing Month), but have no fear because *every* month is NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), and… well.. you get the idea. Some people will no doubt question the “authenticity” of this proliferation of pretenders that aren’t managed by the excellent people at the Office of Letters and Light (the peeps behind Nano); others will no also doubt question the sheer point of setting oneself such a challenge when its only likely to lead to an explosion of unedited draft material full of plot holes getting posted all over the Internet.

The answer to both lines of questioning is, of course, to lighten up. It doesn’t matter if its National Novel Writing Month, or Scribbling Out Stories in the Bath at Midnight Month – the point of it all is it’s an excuse. A kick up the arse. A reason to get something out of one’s head and down on some paper, no matter how convoluted it may be to begin with. A highway salute to one’s inner editor – that worried little perfectionist who always tries to get in the way of what Nano founder Chris Baty refers to as “ambitious acts of the imagination”. Nanowrimo did it first, and they do it best, but the appearance of so many tributes is a testimony to just how much demand there is for this kind of project. Will Wesewrimo cause tonnes of rushed, bizarre, hole-ridden stories to hit the Internet? Probably, but chances are there’ll be gems as well. And really, who cares anyway? The Internet’s a big place, and it’s through endeavours like these that the Web’s potential for encouraging creativity really begins to be unearthed. And as far as I’m concerned ++creativity = big potential for awesome, and most importantly bucketloads of fun.

I never show my Nano-novels to anyone, because they’re rough and crazy and that’s not the point. But with Wesewrimo, posting is my goal and so posting I shall do. So here it is – my contribution to this month’s explosion of dodgy plots and hare-brained scribblings. I certainly shan’t apologise in advance for any incoherence, lack of plot structure or the fact that it is set in some generic approximation of “the past”. I can’t promise I have more than a vague idea of where it’s going. But I can promise I shall update it every week this month (perhaps more), because otherwise I’ll lose, and that would be far worse even than the terror of having people read the damn thing. May the experiment begin…

The Sigh of the Wind and the Foam on the Sea – Part One

Iloilo is the main city on Panay, an island in the Visayas. I spent a week there at the beginning of July, combining work and sightseeing.

Microfinance exists to provide small, low-interest loans to the poor

According to his oft-told story, the first loans Yunus made were less than $1 each, and he didn’t charge any interest to the 42 borrowers who he was helping to avoid borrowing from a local loan shark. However, this is by no means a typical example of the movement he was about to create. Obviously the size of loans varies from location to location depending on local currency value and consumer prices, but one of the critical principles of the working of microcredit is not the provision of the initial loan itself, but rather the permanent availability of credit in the future. The main incentive for borrowers to pay back their loans is that if they do so they will be able to access further loans for larger amounts. So while loans may start relatively small, once a client has built up a good track record with a microbank they should be able to borrow more – eventually hundreds, and occasionally even thousands of dollars. Of course, this makes a lot of sense – if microfinance schemes wish to support the poor in setting up their own businesses, it would be detrimental to their empowerment and ability to compete in the local market not to enable them to expand their businesses as well. And even the larger loans are still relatively small as far as mainstream banks are concerned – many countries implement a cap on how large a microloan can be before a borrower should seek credit from a regulated institution.

Interest is another matter of common misunderstanding. The interest rates charged by microfinance organisations are in fact much higher than the rates charged by banks on credit cards – starting at 25% per annum and averaging 30% – 40%. This is a matter over which microfinance often comes under attack, but the high interest rates are a necessity for sustainability, and sustainability is vital for microfinance organisations to continue their work. The costs associated with providing microloans are much higher than those associated with bank loans simply because of the scale involved. It costs the same in terms of administration and staffing to make one large loan as it does to make one small loan – making many small loans is therefore a much less efficient model, which is why banks don’t do it already. Microfinance organisations also have higher costs because of the social development training they need to provide for staff, the financial training they need to provide for beneficiaries, and the intensivity of collection programmes – loan payments are usually collected weekly, in person, and in difficult to reach areas. The interest rates of microfinance organisations therefore need to reflect these higher costs if they wish to survive. They are still a lot lower than the rates charged by traditional moneylenders.

Finally, the microloans themselves are not the only important feature of microfinance services. Other financial services are also provided which are considered vital for financially empowering the poor communities served (see below).

The high microloan repayment rates make it a low risk investment

Large, well-run MFIs like Yunus’ Grameen Bank report repayment rates between 97-98%, and even smaller lenders report that they try to keep their average rates between 90 and 95%. However, there is no real consensus in the industry on precisely what “repayment rate” means and how it should be calculated – this means that these figures can be very misleading, particularly as many microlenders have differing methodologies for dealing with collections and loan write-offs. This isn’t to say that the poor aren’t necessarily good borrowers, just that there isn’t enough conclusive evidence to support the assertion that on average microfinance sees better repayment rates than bank loans; and that often microfinance providers are not able to accurately assess risk (and therefore set interest rates or take other action accordingly) because the calculations they are using are flawed.

The term “well-run” is also operative here. The microfinance organisations that exhibit the best performance and can be most confident of their repayment figures are those that stick almost religiously to a formula tailored to the local circumstances within which they work. Lending to people with no collateral is, by nature, risky, and the successful microfinance organisations are the ones that manage this risk carefully – by requiring borrowers to be accountable members of a small local community, by operating a loan cycle system that allows borrowers to gain credit and borrow more, and by ensuring frequent scheduled repayments that are collected in person by trained social development workers.

Microfinance is intended to help the poor set up small businesses

While this is certainly one intended use of a microloan, it is by no means the exclusive approach of microfinance providers, who recognise that it is the opportunity to continue loaning ever larger amounts that is the principle motivator for clients to pay their loans on time. These loans may be spent on business creation and business expansion, both of which are usually essential for the client to ensure they can pay, but later loans may also be used to cover school fees for children, doctors and hospital bills and other circumstances that require a relatively large sum of money up-front. One of the intended outcomes of microfinance schemes is to undermine local moneylenders who charge extortionate rates of interest, and people do not always borrow from money lenders just to start businesses. Loans for immediate consumables (food to eat etc.) are usually not an option (although that doesn’t mean they aren’t used that way), and there are sometimes concerns about clients using microloans for cultural practices that the loan providers don’t see as a “justified” use of the money, such as bridal dowries in India. Naturally this leads to debate about just how “locally responsive” microfinance providers need to be if they are to genuinely empower local communities within the context of their own cultural and social practices.

Microfinance is also about more than just making small loans – the principle is designed to address not just credit exclusion, but exclusion from other financial products as well. Most successful microfinance organisations offer savings schemes in addition to loans, and sometimes require their clients to hold savings if they wish to take out further loans. In fact, some of the few good impact assessments that exist have shown that these savings facilities can make more of an impact on relative poverty than the loans themselves. Micro-insurance is a new and growing addition to the scene that seeks to address healthcare provision among poor communities in developing countries.

Microfinance targets the poorest of the poor

In fact, most beneficiaries of microfinance schemes are fairly close to the poverty line – the “richest of the poor” if you will. This is for good reasons – it is these clients who are in the best positions to start successful businesses, generate an income to pay their loans and benefit from the opportunities that microfinance brings to improve the financial condition of themselves and their families. The poorest families are more difficult to reach (sometimes physically as many live in the most rural areas) and are often in need of other more immediate interventions before they could be in a position to benefit from a loan – education is one of the biggest gaps, as well as healthcare. A recent report by USAID, a large provider of funds for microfinance programmes, concluded that their requirement for at least 50% of their aid money to reach the very poorest families wasn’t being met because it was unrealistic in the first place. This is not to say that the poorest are impossible to reach, but microfinance organisations need to work with them in the context of a wider suite of interventions and need to be cautious about the risks involved. Many established microfinance organisations are now looking at how to conduct the outreach work needed to target poorer sectors, but their efforts are largely experimental and they can only do so because they are confident of the security of their existing programmes. Also, it is important not to underestimate the poverty of those who are nearer the poverty line who are being reached – we’re talking people who live on $2 a day rather than $1, so even though they may be at the “richer” end of the poverty scale they are still very much in need of the vital services microfinance brings, and it is only by addressing their needs that microfinance organisations will put themselves in a position where they can target poorer clients.

Microfinance providers are strictly not-for-profit

In the early stages of its development, microfinance was the exclusive preserve of charities, non-profits and NGOs, but as the industry has grown many profit based microfinance providers have started to appear, and big players in international financial markets are beginning to take an interest – SKS is an Indian microfinance bank that is about to become the third such organisation to make shares available on public investment markets (the first was Mexican MFI Compartamos in 2007). Naturally, there are concerns that this situation will lead to exploitation of the poor for profit and Muhammed Yunus has condemned moves to seek funding by these means, stating that it “endangers the whole mission”.

There have been some reported cases of for-profit microfinance organisations engaging in exploitative practices, particularly in India where there is a large microfinance market, and this is obviously a big problem that needs to be addressed. However, in the majority of cases, for-profit microfinance providers maintain that they can still focus on social development goals while being profit-oriented, and there is a strong argument that the presence of competition from for-profit organisations is good for organisational efficiency and accountability. In particular, because of market pressures driving up efficiency, for-profits can often charge lower interest rates on loans than non-profits.

When it comes to putting microfinance organisations on the investment market, there are distinct advantages that can be accessed – not least a strong capital base for expansion that is unavailable through more traditional funding options such as charitable grants. Microfinance is nowhere near as far reaching as people generally believe and it is estimated that 80% of demand goes uncatered for. Accessing capital markets may be the only way to make the provision of microfinance a reality for all those who need it, and yet the idea of corporate fat cats profiting off the poor gives this approach a bad image in people’s minds. A big problem here is the conflation of “profit” with “exploitation” – it is important to make a distinction between the two (if you are unwilling to do this, then it must be assumed that microfinance itself presents you with an undesirable solution to poverty, grounded as it is in capitalist principles). The fact is that if financial equality (or at least the opportunity to achieve financial equality) is the ultimate goal, then attempting to protect “the poor” from capital markets is ironically disempowering – giving people access to basic financial services for empowerment but then artifically sheltering them from the markets that provide the context to these financial services means setting up a situation by which they continue to rely on a form of charity. Obviously this is an undesirable solution – the goal of microfinance should surely be that ultimately the empowered poor can become players in these markets, rather than subject to them, although obviously this is a difficult, long-term process. That’s not to say that these transitions and transactions shouldn’t be handled with great care, nor that for-profits and big market players should be allowed to take a cavalier attitude to poverty, but if these relationships open up opportunities for microfinance to benefit more people, then it is to NGOs and charities that the task will fall of ensuring that the benefits are maximised, that corporate bodies are clear on their social responsibilities, and that beneficiaries are educated about capital markets, their role and how they can be interacted with. In addition, it is to be hoped that the extra resources that capital investment can provide could enable non-profits to focus more of their attention on the very poorest.

Microfinance is a magic cure-all solution for world poverty

Of course, if there was a magic cure-all for world poverty, you’d hope we’d be a bit further towards achieving the Millenium Development Goals than we currently are. Yet microfinance is often treated as this magic solution, particularly in the wake of the publicity received by the industry after Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. In reality, microfinance only addresses one possible cause of/solution to poverty, and while finance and credit exclusion are important issues, as we have explored microfinance initiatives can only help alleviate extreme poverty on a long term and wide scale when applied in a context that includes other vital services and interventions.

In addition, the jury is still out on the impact that microfinance really has on poor families – many microfinance organisations, particularly smaller ones, do not attempt to conduct qualitative impact analyses themselves, instead relying on the (faulty) assumption that if clients continue to loan then microfinance must be working for them. In fact, repeat loans can be a sign of any number of realities, including the often cited worry that clients are taking out loans from one organisation to pay off another. Also, there have so far been very few methodologically sound studies of the impact of microfinance, and those few that have been conducted using randomised control trials show mixed positive and negative results, indicating that the effect of microfinance on the poor may not be as straightforward as originally thought. And there is always the much neglected study of the social and cultural impact that microfinance programmes have, as connecting the poor to Western lending practices and empowering women entrepreneurs in societies when men are often the traditional players in money markets will inevitably have some big cultural consequences.

Again, this is not to diminish the importance of financial empowerment and ending credit exclusion when it comes to eradicating poverty, just that to truly understand the real impact of microfinance, providers need to take more responsibility for measuring their own impact where they work and a lot of research still needs to be done.

(The photos in this post show clients of the microfinance programme of the Association of Disabled Persons in Iloilo (ADPI). You can see more photos from my trip to Iloilo here.)

The Filipinos celebrate their independence from Spanish rule on June 12th. Or rather, the Filipino government does - its a national holiday, but most Filipinos don't actively participate and the only real public celebration is the one in Rizal Park (pictured) that's put on for the president. If it hadn't been for the Lonely Planet it might well have passed me by. Manila Day, which happened a few weeks later might also have done, if I hadn't tried to visit immigration that day to find it closed.

The American Cemetery in Manila is a poignant memorial to the devastation caused in the Philippines by WW2 and is contains the largest number of military graves outside of the US. It's kept incredibly well manicured by the US federal government as its technically considered US soil.

This kind of behaviour attracts contradictory feelings from me – on the one hand I find it enormously touching that often people here will be so worried for me that they will go out of their way to make sure that I have company. In particular as a solo traveller – and the only European volunteer for my organisation in a country where both tourism and volunteering are not widespread – it’s great to be able to meet new people and to spend time in the company of others. At the same time however, the culture of independence that I am used to in the UK means that the constant companionship that is expected in the Philippines can feel very suffocating. Every weekend my colleagues ask me what I have done, and they inevitably follow my account with the concerned question “but who was your companion?”, and if I explain to them that I was on my own (yet again) they laugh almost disbelievingly and tell me that I am very brave. In fact, so disbelieving are the Filipinos that anyone would want to do something on their own, one visitor to our organisation even asked me if, outside of work, I just stayed in my room all the time.

This absence of the very individualistic ideal of independence that is characteristic to some extent of European and American culture is noticeable in other parts of Filipino life as well. Children rarely move out of their parents homes unless they get married, and even then will usually not move too far away from the parental house. Houses themselves are often filled to bursting point with family residents, and even a small one-room studio might be inhabited by three or four people – there doesn’t exist the same construction of “personal space” as in EuroAmerican imaginings, although poverty is undoubtedly a factor here. I have also observed that being alone is considered dangerous by many Filipinos, even those who belong to the community of young, urban professionals whose values are more influenced by American trends. I have many acquaintances in this category who have expressed surprise that I have visited some of the large flea markets on my own because of the perceived danger of these busy spaces and of the vulnerability of a person alone. These kinds of fears, while often present in British culture, are more likely to be mitigated there by awareness and caution than by arbitrary companionship, but in the Filipino understanding two are always better than one.

In reality, even though I have been quite happy to travel to and see places by myself, I have rarely been alone since I arrived – whether I wanted to be or not! In many ways, a big part of the draw of solo travel is meeting people and enjoying the company of strangers – I’ve been very proactive about this and as a result I have had a great many “companions” in my adventures – both Filipino and other travellers, and many of whom I hope to travel more with. They’ve come from all sorts of places – work contacts, international and ex-pat groups, online travel communities like Couchsurfing, and even people like Camille who have just approached me in the street. However, that said, I have still been far more in my own company than I’m used to and so I have had a lot of time to reflect on my situation. The lessons? That strangers can be overwhelmingly kind, generous and fun to be with; that even so, sometimes you don’t have to be alone to feel lonely; and that other times being alone can be all you crave – given my cultural background anyway.

Tahanang is a home and livelihood project for people with disabilities, founded in 1973 by Belgian nun Sr. Valeriana Baerts. The name is Tagalog for "The House With No Steps" and the fully wheelchair accessible site is now home to more than 90 people with disabilities who manufacture wheelchairs and other mobility aids, educational toys and games and a range of handicrafts. There is also a pharmaceutical packaging facility onsite, but I wasn't allowed to take photos there.

My ethnicity is something that in the UK I feel barely aware of – symbols and ideals of national identity permeate the media I’m most exposed to, but race itself is, for very good reasons, rarely a part of this discourse. This means that to suddenly encounter this as a marker of difference, and as one in the minority, can be a confusing and exhausting state of affairs. Confusing because of the constant barrage of responses one gets from local people when just walking in the street (in particular as a Brit I’m not used to being addressed directly by people I don’t know, and as a woman I’m exposed to significantly more than a European man would be), and exhausting for the same reason.

I’ve often met travellers who are enraged by the way in which they are lumped together as part of a single homogenous group by local people in the countries they travel to, sometimes even with a homogenous name, such as gringo (South America), wazungu (East Africa) or, here in the Philippines, simply “Joe” (a legacy of the American occupation), although this sort of grouping and stereotyping is in fact fairly common to both sides. In general I’ve found that the attention is largely innocuous and (in the Philippines especially) is often intended to be friendly, although that hasn’t always been the case – I once took a nasty hit to the head from a rock on a beach in Kenya thrown by some local teenagers who decided they didn’t like my presence there. Also as a European woman it can sometimes get a bit too friendly – last week a security guard took my phone number from the sign-in sheet at a home for the disabled and decided to try his luck. My colleagues thought this was hilarious and the fact that they saw little wrong with his conduct revealed a lot about the cultural differences that can be less conspicuous behind the trappings of modern office environments. When you stand out so much its always best to be on your guard, and often this becomes so tiring that there are times when I wish I could just be invisible for a bit. It also means that when I go to take photographs of people, rather than the arty black and white shot of every day life I was after, I often end up with something like this.

In a way, street photography is somewhat akin to anthropological fieldwork; to be a good street photographer you need to get to know the community within which you’re working – you need to talk to people, to ask questions about who they are and what they’re doing, and use the knowledge you gain to document what photographers refer to as the “reality of everyday life”. As Malinowski, a pioneer of participant observation fieldwork, famously wrote:

“as the natives saw me constantly every day, they ceased to be interested or alarmed, or made self-conscious by my presence, and I ceased to be a disturbing element in the tribal life which I was to study, altering it by my very approach” (Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922)

However at the same time the photographer is also a useful metaphor for the problems with this approach – the camera lens becomes the dark glass through which we try to understand other ways of life and the photographer necessarily never appears in their own account, even though by their very presence they have become part of the “reality of every day life” they are trying to record. The true reality, of course, is that an anthropologist (and similarly a photographer) can never be an invisible observer (much as early proponents of the discipline might have wanted to be), and often it is through their otherness – the very fact that they are so obviously out of place, and the changes that their presence inevitably brings – that their most revealing encounters are had and observations made. And so it is revealing that it is photos like this that most characterise the reality of my daily life – shots that may not beautifully frame the activities on the streets in isolation, but rather that tell of encounters between the Filipinos who live here, and an English photographer who can’t make herself invisible.


(Having said all that, I did manage to get some more traditional street photos – you can see the results of the workshop here >>)