“First and foremost, I am an observer”, says Xyza. “I shoot with feelings for my subject and love to tell the story of our people”.
Remarkable and uplifting is this story of a domestic helper turned professional photographer. Xyza Cruz Bacani is a second-generation domestic helper. She declares: Separation of families due to an occupation is the biggest sacrifice a person can make for their family. “Migrant workers working abroad and alone commonly took pictures (and send to their families) of their assigned households, employer’s homes, destinations, beautiful places and great food on the table to show their families they were okay and living fine but they, in fact, really did not have time to enjoy where they were and did not have time to enjoy where they were and did not really eat those food in their Master’s table.” Her mother, for example, never went out while working in Hong Kong for seven years. She didn’t even bother to learn how to use the train or bus. When Xyza realized this, on her first visit to her mom, she borrowed a camera and started taking pictures of Hong Kong so she could show her mom the world outside her workplace. This started her interest in photography as she also became a domestic helper (DH) in Hong Kong. She was self taught in her camera skills and it took her a decade to get the recognition she deserved.
Her new book is titled “We Are Like Air.” Our ‘amo’ needs us like the air we breathe! We are indispensable in their daily life. Yet, we are easily taken for granted.
She continues to expound and describe how migrant workers take on the little tasks in the home that allows their employers to live comfortably in order to carry out their own essential duties in their own workplace. The DH’s service becomes paramount when they are raising, nurturing and caring for the very children of their employers on a daily basis. She goes on to emphasize how Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) still in the undersirable jobs, yet essential to completing the proper function of vital services around the world. Like the air we breathe, we die without it. Yet we take it for granted in this busy and chaotic world. “Without them (the OFWs), the world could stop” she exclaimed!
She describes himself as a documentary photographer and says she “still doesn’t understand the art world. Not yet.”She just wants to present situations and stories. When she was told that her pictures were good because “(they) depicted stories of people similar in their plight as hers”, she realized that she was capturing the individual stories or hardships of those she identified with.
Xyza finished high school and two years of college but learning in an institution is not in her. To her, “learning” is in the interaction with people. She thrives by “always asking why and always searches for the cotext of things.” Born in 1987, she started raising her two younger siblings when her mother first left. She was 8! She doesn’t want to demean her father for staying in Manila to be their Mr. Mom and feels his father also did the ultimate sacrifice for a Filipino man: to stay home and raise their family while the mother was (more suitable to be) a DH. She is proud of her father’s sacrifices. A good man, loyal to her mother and her family, and taught them correct values even though they lived a very poor life in their barrio.
Her popular posts in social media eventually earned her a Magnum Foundation Fellowship in New York City (which offers mentorship and stipends to early-career practitioners who are at a critical moment in their development as photographers). At first, Xyza didn’t want to take up this fellowship because she wanted to continue to work and send her income home to support their family. She didn’t tell anybody. Her employer had to find this out in the local news! When her employer found out about her circumstances, she fired Xyza to make her go to New York and receive her fellowship! Xyza always felt she was destined for bigger things primarily because of “the emplty life her family sacrificed for her and her two siblings”. This lifelong search finally gave her way finder her mission in life: To Uplift the Lives of Migrant Workers.
When asked about the Oscar’s Academy-award winning film Roma, Xyza said it “was made by the privileged, for the privileged”. A movie from the perspective of the rich viewer. I can’t wait to see her version of Roma. Maybe one day she will tell her story. Her present projecdts are behind the movie camera!
Source: CHANGNING THE NARRATIVE: An Intimate Conversation on Transformation and Photography. With Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala. Held Tuesday, March 5, 2019, at the Manila House.
Correspondent: Tony Lilles, Lifetime member and Club President, 2001.
Published in the April 2019 edition of the Viewfinder.
