• CHRISTIANA CLAUDIA GACUMA GANCAYCO
When you think of a photography art show, what else does the imagination offer outside of printed images framed and mounted on a wall?
In the heart of Silay City, Negros Occidental, homegrown visual artist Aeson Baldevia is well on his way to bringing photography into the four walls of fine art galleries, both here and abroad.
Aeson first made his name in 2017 after being the lone Filipino artist selected by the Celeste Prize in London as one of their global finalists for excellence in content, contemporary aesthetic, technique, and material. He proudly represented the country in his category with his photograph “Antes Sanda Madura / Before They Are Gone,” a visual homage to the indigenous community of Panay Bukidnon that documented their way of living.
This sensitivity to preserving cultural significance is a common theme seen in Aeson’s other works, such as “Ato Bala” for Art Fair 2023, Unearthed Series for Fotomoto: HOME 2023, “Whispers of Light: A Homage to Félix Laureano” for Viva EXCON 2023, and Para Sa Pumapasada: A Tribute to the Filipino Jeepney.
“These practices are fading, and I hope it would be documented in a way that’s interesting to the younger generation,” said Aeson as he reflected on how the job of photographers intersects with that of a historian. “For me, photographers have a responsibility to document things happening right now,” he added.
Since then, his creative works found their way into international exhibitions across Switzerland, Belgium, London, South Korea, and Germany.
FAMILY HERITAGE AND HAND-ME-DOWNS
Aeson grew up in a big family that is a tight-knit clan — first and second cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins up to who-knows-what degree, in-laws, and distant relatives. They had a long-standing tradition to gather and make Sundays their family day up until his grandparents passed away. “Every Sunday, I look forward to stories being told and updates from my relatives,” Aeson fondly recalled. “I am very much attached to stories of people.”
Growing up in the quiet, heritage-rich streets of Silay placed Aeson in the backyard of a city with a deep reverence for art and culture. This was not lost on the Tronco-Baldevia family, whose inclination for the arts runs in the blood. His father, Bes Baldevia, is a film photographer, while on his mother’s side, the Troncos, he has an uncle who is a renowned photographer and an aunt who owned a photo-video business, which would later on become a fertile ground for Aeson’s relationship with the camera when he would work there as a part-time shooter.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Aeson’s two younger brothers are visual artists in their own right as well, one who is into graphic design and the other into videography. During family trips, their dad would stop the car when passing by beautiful sceneries without being prodded, knowing full well that his sons were itching to pull out their cameras and let their creativity play.
While Aeson was naturally fascinated in consuming stories told through images, it was his father who finally nudged him toward the direction of a camera. As a sophomore, Aeson almost joined his highschool’s catechism club for his extracurricular engagement, a choice he made nonchalantly simply because the moderator was his close friend. When his father saw that the school had a photography club, he encouraged Aeson to join that one instead.
Call it father’s instinct, but that proved to be the awakening for Aeson. A year into the photography club, Aeson won 1st runner-up in the first contest he joined, competing with industry professionals and adults at the Negros Occidental Environment Week. To this day, he can still vividly remember the winning piece he took with a hand-me-down Fuji point-and-shoot camera: a photo of a sunset overlooking the wharf of Silay in the backdrop with migrating birds hovering above.
PHOTOGRAPHER TO FINE ART IMAGE-MAKER
Aeson’s earliest memory of his inclination towards the craft was buying a photography book. He was a regular subscriber of I-Mag Photography Magazine and Digital Photography Philippines Magazine, reflecting now that his habit of scanning the pages for pictures rather than texts was unconsciously his way of expanding his image bank, a deep well he would eventually draw from as a visual artist. He’d comb through the pages of the magazines and run his eyes over the names of Filipino photographers and creatives he looked up to.
Despite growing up in a family of visual artists, Aeson had to fend for himself when it came to grasping the technicalities of photography and exploring his style. He had no official mentor, so it was up to him to be his own teacher, which had its pros and cons. It was hard because he didn’t have a blueprint to follow, but good in that he could go his direction and put his creative spin on it. His What and Why were clear from the moment he first held a camera — it was only a matter of figuring out the How.
“I never had doubts [about] doing photography,” he said resolutely.
So, when the time for college rolled around, Aeson decided to make adjustments to his initial plan of pursuing business. As he didn’t want his new-found passion to take the backseat, he took up Liberal Arts & Commerce, so he could pursue both interests under the programs AB Communications and Marketing at the University of St. La Salle.
If anything, it was his photography behind the wheel during his college days as he joined The La Salle Yearbook – USLS as its staff photographer. This was also when he kickstarted Project 365, a self-imposed goal of taking a photograph every single day, which started out as a casual challenge between him and a friend. Being a diligent student to his craft, he continued Project 365 for four whole years, and never missed a day. His passion project gained traction in the local community that by his senior year, his talent caught the eye of renowned theater director and arts manager Tanya Lopez, who connected Aeson with the editors of iMag Photography Magazine. The editors were quick to see what Lopez saw in Aeson, so one thing led to another, and he was later on featured as an up-and-coming travel photographer in iMag Photography Magazine — the very same one he was once thumbing through for the work of his idols.
Aeson would then graduate from USLS, leaving behind a legacy of being the first and only four-time recipient of the USLS Corps d’ Elite Award in the field of visual arts. While some would look at the accolades he garnered early on in his career and think that he had a definitive road ahead as a commercial photographer, years of work and exploring would reveal to him that he loved the less-traveled road of fine art image-making. This inkling was confirmed when he was offered by Orange Project, a regional contemporary art gallery in Bacolod City, a space to exhibit his work. In 2018, Aeson was part of the group exhibit “Cycles 003” at the said gallery, which was the first time his work was displayed in a gallery format.
Six years later, it is in the same gallery where Aeson will hold his first solo show this coming July, now fully embracing his identity as a Negrense fine art image-maker in “Chance Encounters”, an exhibit curating his fine art photography-based works.
“Photography is not just print, frame, hang,” Aeson emphasized. This exhibition will be his testament to that, and we either just have to take his word for it or visit the show to see for ourselves.
“Chance Encounters” will open on July 5, 3 p.m. and run until August 15 at Orange Project Gallery, Art District, Bacolod City. It is supported by Fotomoto, Silver, and Hahnemühle.*
