“Sunday Afternoon” Photography Rydel Cerezo
“Bakakeng, Detail” Photography Rydel Cerezo
Although the history of the humankind on the islands of the Philippines goes back more than 700,000 years, four centuries of Spanish and American colonisation have radically reshaped the mindset of modern life. For photographer Rydel Cerezo, now 22, the schisms that exist between the east and the west were further amplified when he emigrated from Baguio City to Canada at the age of 10 along with his parents and two siblings.
“Like most immigrant families, my parents wanted to move in hopes of beginning better lives,” Cerezo says. “My family was living comfortably but they recognised the Philippines was beginning to face rising unemployment rates. Sacrifices were and are continuingly be made, and like most immigrant families you don’t arrive securely middle class.”
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As a queer child growing up in the Roman Catholic Church, Cerezo came to realise that, “the very thing that can bring you so much pain can yield so much joy at the same time – and that can come from both religion and family”. For the artist, photography has become a path to explore notions of love and intimacy, race and beauty, culture and history, sexuality and religion to investigate the complex interplay between identity and institutions as a means to begin healing intergenerational trauma.
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Here, in never-before-published works from the series To Be From The Same Tree, which document his relationship with his partner and partner’s family, paired with photographs from Under The White Light made in the Philippines, Cerezo shares his experiences as a queer Filipino man navigating the idea family in the east and the west – and the surprising connections he has uncovered along the way.
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“Andreas and I” Photography Rydel Cerezo
“Legio Mariae” Photography Rydel Cerezo