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'LOVE, MANILA' - upcoming book by Michelle Baltazar

“A FIL-AUSSIE visits Manila and comes back with images of faces, of streets and familiar icons blending with the ever changing landscape of the city. She has turned these snapshots into a new picture book on Manila .. It took a brief travel back home for Michelle Baltazar to shoot and write on Manila as she saw it. She went home a visitor and came back an author of “Love, Manila”, a compilation of photos and brief essays, 104 pages that give tribute to the city. The pages reveal simple encounters and unrehearsed moments of pleasantries for someone who had become a ‘tourist’ in her own home - an experience quite common among expatriates. Michelle first only hoped to rediscover her roots and eventually rediscover Manila. But there was more to seeing the city that charmed her to do the book. It was not even planned. “I initially started with the idea of writing a few articles for the community newspapers and for a couple of mainstream newspapers,” Michelle said. “I had no expectations at all of what I will get from the trip because it was so short and was around the Lent period, which meant half of the places I went to were closed. “But when I arrived back in Australia, I discovered that I took a lot of images that evoked emotions and memories for me.” Soon the idea turned into a full-blown project. The journalist in Michelle, who works as editor at the Financial Standard, made it easy for her ‘to spot the story’ - to use the journalists’ expression. There are always stories behind pictures.

“Before I knew it, I was spending hours sifting through photos and ended up organising them according to different categories. The project became more and more involved where I started writing ‘short stories’ around images,” she said. Most of the photos in the book were taken in Manila during her ten day visit. About ten per cent of the images however were taken during what she called her ‘road trip’ to La Union, her dad’s birthplace. In that travel she ended up comparing notes of her old abode and the new abode. “Just like any other ‘tourist’, the photos were my keepsakes of the first time I saw Manila from the eyes of a Filipino-Australian. I was comparing the churches and cathedrals to St. Mary’s Cathedral at Hyde Park, I was comparing Mall of Asia to Westfield. I was comparing my bus trip to La Union with the bus trip I took to Canberra.” “To be honest, I would say that the photos I took were a pale comparison to some of the spectacular photos of the Philippines I’ve seen before. But every picture in the book tells a story of my experience.” Michelle traveled to Manila as a sponsored journalist in a project supported by the Sydney Filipino Press Group. “I am indebted to the Sydney Filipino Press Group, particularly Jaime K. Pimentel, who was the brainchild behind the idea of sponsoring a journalist to go to the Philippines. The Department of Tourism and the Philippine Air Lines are worth thanking for supporting the project.” Michelle was born in Pasay city Born in Pasay and had spent childhood years between La Union, Leyte, and Manila. She came here with her family in 1990. She turns 34 this month. Michelle is single and finds time to get busy with work related to media. She is a contributing reporter to ABS-CBN Australia and is founder of a. It took a painstaking two months for her to finish the project.And now that it’s done she hoped to convey some message - about a Filo’s view of Manila and about the wonderful capital of the Phlippines. ‘Love, Manila’ will be out in September as a self-published book. “The book is as much about self-discovery as it is about sharing a slice of my life to the Australian community (Filipino and non-Filipino). I’m often asked by my friends here in Australia, ‘What’s in the Philippines?’ - and this book attempts to answer that.” [photos from the book]

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