Pulitzer winner searches for faces of People Power

It's a photograph that anyone familiar with the EDSA Revolution might recognize. Having just taken her oath as President, Corazon Aquino still has her right hand in the air, on her face a mixture of reluctance, joy, and relief. Her two daughters, Pinky and Kris, watch with pride as onlookers raise their hands in applause. “For a photographer, that's the moment you're looking for. It's that split second. That's the crescendo moment," says American photojournalist Kim Komenich, who took the iconic photo twenty-five years ago. Between 1984 and 1986, Komenich and reporter Phil Bronstein from the San Francisco Examiner travelled to the Philippines numerous times to cover one of the world’s biggest stories — the events before, during, and after the 1986 People Power revolution. During those years, Komenich took more than 20,000 photographs that would eventually become quintessential images of the world's first bloodless revolt and earn him the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Reporter Phil Bronstein’s coverage of the fall of the Marcos regime was also a finalist for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Twenty-five years later, Komenich is 54 years old and back in the Philippines. But this time, he's on a new assignment – to track down, interview, and photograph the people he photographed in 1986. The results of Komenich's search will be assembled in “Revolution Revisited," a documentary film about the 25th anniversary of People Power that will aim to tell the story of the Philippines, post-EDSA, through the individual stories of those who witnessed the revolution first hand. After years as a photographer, Komenich began doing videography in the ‘90s and took to making documentary films. No longer a daily news photographer, he’s currently a professor of multimedia storytelling at San Jose State University in Northern California. He’s producing “Revolution Revisited" independently, as a “creative research project" for his professorship. In addition to the documentary, Komenich is also producing a photo exhibit, book, and iPad application for the project. A 20 to 30-minute “teaser version" of the film is set to premiere in the Philippines in February in time for the 25th anniversary of People Power, though Komenich is still ironing out exactly where and when. Komenich is likewise talking to a major museum about hosting an exhibit of his photographs also in February, while the book and iPad application are targeted for release by August. The project comes at a time when many Filipinos are struggling to ask whether People Power has lived up to its own promise. Are Filipinos better off now than they were 25 years ago? Is our government less corrupt, more in tune with the needs and desires of the people? These are some of the questions that the project will try to answer. “Twenty-five years is a perfect time to do this because, for the most part, everybody's still around, and everybody has fond memories of it. It's something they went through together, and it brings back good memories. And I think if I go for 30 years or 50 years, it's gonna be too late," said Komenich when GMANews.TV met with him recently to discuss the project. Since August, Kim and his documentary team, who are based in Northern California, have made three trips to the Philippines, during which they've interviewed and taken portraits of key EDSA personalities — including former First Lady Imelda Marcos, former President Fidel V. Ramos, former Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, and close relatives of former President Corazon Aquino — all of whom graced Kim's Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs from the 1980's. “The goal is to not only look for people, but also to ask the question, what happened after 25 years to this particular person? In this whole series there's a range of stories, from the powerful to the poor," says Rick Rocamora, a U.S.-based Filipino documentary photographer and close friend of Komenich who has been helping contact some of the subjects for “Revolution Revisited." Perhaps even more interesting than the famous personalities are the stories of the ordinary people from Kim's photographs — the activists, demonstrators, nuns, soldiers, and students who were there for People Power. It's these people who have also been the most challenging to locate. “When we take a photograph of a particular moment, we don't know what's in the subject's mind," explains Rocamora. “So our role now, when we go back (to talk to these people), is to ask the question: at that particular moment, what was going on in your mind?" The filmmakers have posted Kim's photos online, hoping that netizens might be able to identify some of the faces. So far, his team has managed to contact some subjects through e-mail, Facebook, and even by old-fashioned luck. While shopping in Greenhills last month, very near EDSA where the People Power masses gathered in 1986, co-producer Rocamora spotted a nun wearing the same habit as some of the sisters shown in a photo taken on the second or third day of the revolution. In the photo, the nuns are offering crackers to the Marines who had been tasked by the Marcos regime to keep the EDSA protests under control. “I ran to the nun and I said, 'Sister, I need your help.' So I showed her the picture. I told her it’s a long shot, but she said, 'I know her! She's in Montreal,'" recounts Rocamora. The nun gave them the contact details to a certain Sister Delia Regidor, who happened to be visiting the Philippines for the Christmas season at the time. She became one of their film's subjects. Of course, Kim has his own memories of the 1986 revolution. Especially vivid is his recollection of photographing Corazon Aquino's inauguration before rushing to cover Marcos' final speech in Malacañang. “In terms of a personal high or a personal moment, I would say it was finishing up photographing Cory at Club Filipino, jumping in a cab,… and getting to the Palace in time for Marcos's last speech. I get up on a scaffold... and get that picture, and it all happens within two hours," he recalls. Most news photographers never get to see again the people whom they photograph. Yet this project presents Komenich with the unique opportunity to not only meet them again after many years, but to learn more about the personal stories that gave his photos power. “I can't tell you how many people I owe a picture to. I've never been very good at saying thank you, because I've always been running and running and running. This is an opportunity for me to thank them," says Komenich. After interviewing around 11 subjects for the film, with more interviews being arranged, Kim says he gets a sense that People Power is still very much a source of hope for Filipinos. “The rollercoaster of the different governments that have come in, they were varying levels of the same old thing. And I think now, with President Aquino today, I think there is this kind of renewed sense of hope that a lot of the old ways might change." (with reporting by Paterno Esmaquel II) -HS, GMANews.TV Photos courtesy of Kim Komenich and the Bancroft Library, University of California-Berkeley