Image size: 15.0 x 22.5 cm,
Image size: 16.6 x 23.8 cm (,
with border: 20.2 x 25.3 cm)
Sonny Yabao was born in Catbalogan, Philippines in 1943. He started as an assistant in a friend’s portrait studio in Manila in the 1960s, before going on to work as a freelance contributor to various local and international publications. During the Marcos era, he joined the Bureau of National and Foreign Information as an official photographer for Imelda Marcos, a stint from which he was named Photojournalist of the Year by the Press Photographers of the Philippines and the National Press Club. After Martial Law, he worked as the photo editor of Newsday, an important daily broadsheet that ran from 1989 to 1991. Yabao sought to capture daily life as it happened, seeing his camera as “a sanctuary for [his] restlessness”. Peculiarly, it is through his documentary style that he evokes the avant-garde and experimental in everyday life, finding the surreal in the most mundane of scenes, to see what is strange in the most ordinary moments. The influence of Bresson is clear in his subject matter and composition – with subjects appearing to be caught naturally, spontaneously, and in the moment. Taken and made by the photographer himself, these prints are testament to his keen sense of observation in capturing the various scenes he encountered whilst on his various shooting assignments and personal photographic trips.
