A Dissonance

From top: '308', '425', '449' all by Frankie Callaghan. Courtesy Silverlens. Click photo to enlarge.

On the way out of the opening of Frankie Callaghan’s exquisite exhibit at Silverlens Gallery last night, I bumped into the photographer himself returning from the driveway. Having learnt from a conversation with him upstairs in the gallery that he came to the Philippines at the age of 10 when the family settled in Baguio, I asked him if he spoke Ilocano. Mr. Callaghan speaks with a mild British accent when he speaks in English; his late father was British, his mother is Filipino. Mr. Callaghan moved back to the Philippines a couple of years ago. From the way he speaks in English it’s impossible to say if he has any Tagalog. And he certainly looks very foreign. I digress. In response to my question, Mr. Callaghan leaned his face to me (he is a good foot taller) and said, “Wen,” with that super hard, guttural short e that is a characteristic of Baguio Ilocano. He sounded like a fieldworker from Asin, or a vegetable vendor on Session Road. Most disconcerting.

“It’s so hard to look at the art at an opening,” I was saying to the editor of the magazine Flow, Miguel Rosales, upstairs. I always meet Mr. Rosales at the cocktails-for-culture. “You’re trying to look at the art, but you can’t help thinking, ‘Oh my God, she’s gotten so fat,’ or ‘What a chic thing she’s got on,’ or ‘They’re together?’” The opening of an exhibit, mandatory to attend in support of the artist and the making of art in general, is, for all its attempts at being about art, a social event.

At Dwellings, however, Mr. Callaghan’s exhibit of photographs, the beauty is plain and voluptuous. The sensibility is operatic, like an aria, but without pathos, so there is something cold about it too, and unflinching.

For inquiries, contact Silverlens Gallery at 2/F YMC Bldg. II, 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext., Makati, 816-0044, 0905-2650873, or manage@silverlensphoto.com. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 10am–7pm and Saturdays 1–6pm. www.silverlensphoto.com.