Jay Plogman
Photographer
Artistic Encapsulation of Life
By M.D. dela Cruz Tan
With E.O. Azucena

PHOTO (ABOVE) BY NJAMES, COURTESY OF JAY PLOGMAN

BROWN BEAUTIES. Jay Plogman wants to promote the idea that the brown race is beautiful.

“They’re still decent,” Jay Plogman says, smiling, “so you can interview them, if that’s what you want.”

We were in a studio in Makati City, dropping by, as requested, to supposedly see him in action, taking photographs that will “highlight Filipino men,” he says, since “it really doesn't matter if they are gay or not, (but) it's no secret that Asian men, in general, are marginalized when it comes to their presence in (the) media.  Even here in the Philippines, only white men or the fairest-skinned mestizos are deemed worthy of being in advertising campaigns, magazines, et cetera.  So I hope that through (these) photographs, people will begin to see that guys (and girls) can have dark skin, et cetera, and be really good looking, and worthy of the same presence.”

Casually garbed in dark blue T-shirt on top of dark shorts, he was Sunday personified, even as he was quite adamant in saying that he prefers for his photographs not to be seen as “gay” or have necessarily anything to do with the gay community, since in photographs he takes, even those “inherently gay,” he, more than anything, says something about the people portrayed in it, or the characters played in it, “in a positive light, showing how normal it all is,” he says.  Artistic encapsulation of life, if you may.

He then excused himself, walking barefoot towards the inside of the studio, off to check his equipment.  His boyfriend Edson stays behind to make small talk on how the shoot should, hopefully, help shift impressions on beauty – a theme Plogman almost always approaches with gusto, especially here in the Philippines, where he is based now.

Padding back to where we were, if only to inform us that the photoshoot is about to start, Plogman starts giving some instructions to his models – Edson moves to where they were, to help out, I suppose, as off they went to put flesh in Plogman’s vision.

But how, exactly, did the country end up having an adept photographer cum advocate in the person of Plogman?

STARTING YOUNG

Everything started when he was younger, when Plogman recalls getting excited by photography, especially “when I (saw) my father bring out his 35 millimeter (mm) camera to take pictures on a family vacation, (and) I knew they’d be something special – there was something about that camera and the images it took that I perceived as better than what my mom and I got from our 126 and 110 cameras.  Dad's was a ‘real’ camera, and I couldn't wait until I was old enough to have one of my own,” he says.

He got “old enough” to have his own camera when he was in high school, “when I saved up enough to buy a used Fujica 35 mm all-manual single-lens reflex (SLR) camera.”  It helped, too, that one of his high school teachers was an avid photographer.

In hindsight, Plogman “originally took up photography because I loved to photograph trains.   They're still one of my favorite things to photograph – nature and what I loosely term ‘travel’ are others.  Yes, people are also some
of my favorites, but shooting nature, architecture, or trains is very spiritual and therapeutic.  The zen calm of nature, geometry of architecture (and the play of light on both), and the power of a train.  So (it’s) work I get to do alone, just myself and the camera.”

In college, Plogman studied visual arts, familiarizing himself with theories and practice of, among others, painting, drawing, theory, history, sculpture, and, yes, photography.  “The lessons I learned from all of those disciplines are employed every time I pick up the camera to take a picture,” he now says, adding that good knowledge base is important since “photography today can be a daunting profession to enter, since every time you move, you're starting over from nothing.   There are the established professionals working in every city in every country to compete with, plus it seems every person who buys a digital SLR camera thinks that makes them a professional photographer.”

Among Plogman’s credited influences are “masters including O. Winston Link in railroad photography, Robert Mapplethorpe in nature and nude, Nan Goldin in real-life portraits, and, lately, Richard de Chazal for manipulative photographic work.  I'm also heavily influenced by writers such as Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde; and the comedian Jack Benny.  I know it isn't readily apparent how they affect my photography, but they do,” he says.

Plogman recalls, too, how, “for my first 17 years in photography, the only things digital were watches,” he says, noting how “digital imaging is in many ways a great advance, but it is also a great obstacle.  I'm not the type of person who takes to computer features easily.  Personal computer (PC) or Mac, none of it is intuitive at all to me.  Going from film to digital and using editing software instead of simply reading a negative or slide and making corrections in printing has been a long process for me.  I'm so lucky I can use both, and I feel the strength I and other pre-digital photographers have over those who know only digital.”

He adds: “With film (especially when shooting slide films like Fujichrome or Kodachrome), a photographer has to do everything right the moment the picture is taken.  As a result, those ‘old timers’ get it right on the first take.  Those photographers in Luneta are FAR more talented than the public gives them credit for; and using equipment often over 30 years old.  People today think of a camera as obsolete after a couple years.”

And then he met Edson.

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