Tahan-tahanan (Home Away from Home)

Tahan-tahanan (Home Away from Home)

Philippines | Monday, January 14, 2013 | 5 photos

Hi, I’m Gerson and I’m a teacher. I taught multimedia and design for three years in a public high school in the Philippines, and currently in graduate school pursuing a masters degree on educational media and technology.

My passion for education and social change deeply informs my photography practice. Whenever I shoot photos, I think of it as telling relevant stories that could give viewers a transformative experience, just like teaching. I see photography as a way to change people’s perspectives and hopefully affect the world around them, which is why I do travel and documentary photography. The visual nature of the medium empowers me to share unfamiliar, gripping, humorous, tragic, and inspiring stories.

Being a teacher has also instilled in me the love for lifelong improvement; educators never stop learning. I constantly try to be better at my craft, so I grab all opportunities to learn from people I look up to, whether in formal classes and workshops or informal setups like apprenticeships. This growth allows me to produce more fascinating work as well as to teach and pass on new knowledge, my way of becoming a positive agent of change.