Geronimo Cristobal, PhD Candidate in History of Art, has published a new article in the journal Art History.
The article examines the work of Alfonso Ongpin (1885–1975), a Filipino photographer, art conservator, and collector active in early twentieth-century Manila. It focuses on his use of Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs) as a way of building a vernacular archive at a time when photography in the Philippines was largely shaped by American colonial and ethnographic frameworks.
Rather than producing images that classified Filipinos as racial or ethnological types, Ongpin’s postcards documented everyday urban life and social relations. The article argues that these images functioned as a counter-archive, offering an alternative way of seeing portrait subjects as historical and civic actors rather than objects of colonial knowledge.
By situating Ongpin’s postcards within the visual economy of American-occupied Manila, and alongside decolonial theories and parallel practices in other colonised societies, the article shows how photography functioned as a tool for asserting visual sovereignty and imagining a Filipino nation under U.S. empire.
