Max Pasion began his
journalistic career in Baguio (a mountain resort city 250 kilometers north of
Manila) where he had been living since 1980. In 1994, at the age of 26, a
community daily put his English writing skills to good use when it hired him as
a reporter. Due to lack of manpower, he himself supplied the pictures for his
news stories, shooting in black and white with an Olympus OM-10 with a 50mm.
lens borrowed from his father. He went on to work as a reporter-photographer
for various local and Manila newspapers.
In 1997 he committed to
photojournalism as a profession. That was the year he made the photographs that
comprise the first images in his portfolio. Along the way he discovered that,
done right, color adds an extra layer of meaning to images, and he shot in
color ever since. He taught himself how to tell a story with pictures,
eventually becoming adept at the photoessay.
He moved to
Manila where he found work with The Manila Times, a broadsheet of national circulation,
in 2002. His travels thus far are very modest, ranging from the Philippine
Cordillera (whose unofficial capital is Baguio City) to Manila and a few places
south of it, mostly in Luzon Island. Even then he managed to build a
significant portfolio that can be considered as an extended photoessay on the
Philippines in spite of its limited geographic coverage. He now lives with his
wife, Reena Rose Sibayan, in Jersey City, New
Jersey.
Contact: pixmaniax@gmail.com
Blog: playography.blogspot.com