History Of Philippine Wedding Photography
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Written by: khloe
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Word Count: 749 |
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 |
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Before Photoshop, DVD, and memory card became a by word in photography, there was a time when film and flashbulbs were everything in this nearly 200-year old art form. The evolution of photography equipment went side by side with its known purpose, primarily to serve as a documentation of events, whether personal or commercial. And one of the most celebrated form of photography is wedding photography. Let us look back at the history of wedding photography, specifically, Philippine wedding photography. In the process, we may also learn more about the rise of Filipino wedding photographers.
The history of wedding photography begins in the early 1840s. During this period, photography had very little commercial use, but the idea of creating memories of the wedding day was already born. Mainly because of equipment limitations, wedding photography was contained in studios for more then a century. In the 1800s there were no paper photographs, no multiple photographs, and no albums.
One of the first Filipino photographers was Félix Laureano. His pictorial compositions, such as En el baño (In the Bathroom) and Cuadrilleros (Laborers), focused on human forms, cockfights and bullfights in the Philippines. He also became the first Filipino photographer to publish a book of photographs about the Philippines (Recuerdos de Filipinas, or Memories of the Philippines) in Barcelona in 1895. Laureano was also regarded as “the first Filipino artist to consciously use photography as a medium for art” During this time, there was no concept of a ´Filipino wedding photographer'. Philippine wedding photography wasn´t popular and was available only to the higher society. Photography was used as a medium of news and information about the colony, as a tool for tourism, as an instrument for anthropology, as a means for asserting social status, as an implement for historical documentation, as a device for communication, as materials for propaganda, and as a source of ideas for illustrations and engravings.
In the 1930's, a dynamic change in the photo industry happened; changing the traditional wedding photography style into a new style called wedding photojournalism or documentary style emerged. The style which captures the wedding as it unfolds. Photojournalistic wedding photography takes its cue from editorial reporting styles and focuses more on candid and undirected images with little photographer interaction.
During the Philippine Commonwealth period, 1935 to 1941, until the end of World War II, photography was incorporated by Filipinos to become an “indigenized” part of Philippine culture and society. Examples of this cultural incorporation include photographing of weddings, wakes, portraits of Filipino beauty pageant queens, politicians, cult leaders, and popular Philippine sceneries and panorama. Later on, the boom in Philippine wedding photography, resulted to photographic albums bound and collected by Filipino families that preserved personal events especially weddings.
Being a colony of the United States, products like cameras and film became accessible to more Filipinos. From 1950s onwards, Filipino wedding photographers started building their studios and making a name for themselves.
Add pop culture and America colonial influence to the equation, Philippine wedding photography became more complex and introduced other approaches. At the beginning of the new millennium, the invention of digital photography paved the way for more Filipino wedding photographers. Wedding photographers who were used to film photography went with the flow and learned about this new trend in wedding photography.
With the rise of the digital age, digital cameras allow deeper coverage of the event with a virtually unlimited amount of photographs taken, and great design opportunities. Post-production has become both a threat and opportunity for Filipino wedding photographers on how their works are adjudged. Digital printing allowed the rise of more complex wedding albums, particularly the introduction of flush-mount albums with magazine-style layout or storybook style, utilizing both traditional and photojournalistic shots. This is Philippine wedding photography as we know today. More complex yet the purpose remains the same – to capture every single moment of this memorable event.
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