These photographs are excerpts from a recent campaign commissioned by Project Propel, a global grass roots humanitarian organization currently active in the Philippines. The themes of this project are overpopulation, climate change, pollution, poverty, malnutrition, child life, the treatment of women & girls, and the possibilities for empowerment of vulnerable populations.
This series aims to step out of the warped Western gaze and offer an immersive experience into these themes, as well as glimpses into the lives of millions of people who experience them every day.
Manila is perhaps the place that most perfectly exemplifies the issues that plague our world today. Looking at Manila offers us a chance to understand, in a concentrated way, our global state through the lives of the people and animals here. The story is our future, and it is written by our past.
The conditions of life in Manila are the late stage product of colonialism, war, wastefulness, commercialism, racism, sexism, religion, species superiority, and exploitation. All the garbage of the developed world somehow seems to end up here, permeating every realm of life. Plastic and chemical pollution is ubiquitous. People and animals have no choice but to eat, drink, breathe, and (often literally) swim in it.
The main mode of public transportation in Manila are thousands of Jeepneys, (retired WW2-era buses left behind by the US,) as well as old cars and motorcycles in various states of disrepair. Traffic congestion is constant and getting around is a multi-hour nightmare. All of this renders the air unbreathable. Asthma is a common reality for people here, especially children.
Malnutrition in Manila is a slightly different picture than the scarcity of food usually associated with the term – it is an abundance of fake food and the total absence of nutrition. The only foods that are accessible to most people are becoming outlawed or commercially undesirable in the developed world. The waste of the global food and chemical industries is sold to the people of Manila as essential food items. MSG, for example, comes in kilogram bags and is a staple in every household. Everything is heavily scented and flavoured, and sugar (mostly in the form of ultraprocessed corn syrup) is in everything. Chemicals are a main ingredient in every kind of food sold in stores. This is the only type of food that most people can afford, as meagre daily wages cannot purchase fresh food
for an ever-growing family.
The majority of people who live in Manila, with the exception of the wealthy, who are sequestered in their own air-conditioned gated neighbourhoods and high-rises, live in vast “informal settlements.” These are squalid, high-rent places, where hundreds of thousands of people per square mile live in any way they can. Often the size of such a dwelling can be one single room for a large family, and the rent is almost prohibitively high. For most inhabitants of these settlements, it is mathematically impossible to ever make enough money to get out. Eventually, they pay with their lives – which is why it is not common to see many senior citizens on the streets of Manila.
Cemeteries offer a higher-grade residence for people who have access through a relative engaged as a crypt keeper to a wealthy family, because they are relatively quieter and safer. Living in a cemetery is a privilege.
The dominance of religion has wreaked havoc on the population, eliminating any chance for critical examination of itself, especially in regard to family planning and the treatment of women and girls.
Everyone of child bearing age seems to be in an unbroken cycle of pregnancy. In the municipal hospitals, women give birth simultaneously, several per bed, day in and day out. Children and animals fill the frame of sight in every direction, every place.
The rains bring constant terror to the inhabitants of Manila’s informal settlements, especially the women. The hard rain brings flooding that goes higher and higher each time, wiping out people’s belongings and living quarters, and making disease much harder to avoid. It cannot be overstated what a continuous threat flooding is to everyday life and health. Approaching storm clouds seem to trigger a quiet and everpresent PTSD in people as they wait for the inevitable next flood.
Visually, Manila serves as a “Ghost of Christmas Future” of sorts to us as we march along our current path – accepting and participating in the growth of the astronomical gap between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor, accepting the comforts and tyranny of religion and imperialism, accepting without question and exulting the leadership of unchecked global greed and its champions, engaging in endless and mindless consumerism, no matter the cost. But there is a sliver of hope, and it lies squarely with women and girls. The grass-roots betterment projects that have taken root and flourished in Manila – self-sustained manufacture of reusable menstrual pads, production of “eco-bricks” out of plastic waste to use as building material and floatation devices, converting garbage spaces into community vegetable gardens, among others – are all spearheaded by women.
