Jo Ann Bitagcol, Antipolo.
A woman with bright eye shadow looks over her shoulder at the camera. She is wearing a billowing floor length gown. The back is pleated and flows into a large knot at the back of her knees. The dress designed by Patrice Ramos Diaz. 2008 Unpublished. Styled by Michael Salientes. Hair and Makeup: Veronica Rae Garrido. Print 2023 Willian Turner 310 GSM 100% cotton 86.1 x 63.5cm (33 7/8 x 25in) 2024. Photograph courtesy of Mark Nicdao
Five of the photographer’s printed works were acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Here, he talks to Vogue Philippines about the years-long, fulfilling process of acquisition and the stories behind the photos, shot between 2008 and 2012.
In 2008, photographer Mark Nicdao, stylist Michael Salientes, and their creative team happened upon an abandoned building in Tanay, Rizal, by chance. They had been jumping from location to location that day, shooting images of model Jo Ann Bitagcol. Nicdao spotted the looming structure out of the corner of his eye as they drove down a mountain; it was most likely a rundown school, he described, weathered by age. He laughs as he recalls himself saying, “There! Let’s go in there!”
Inside, they found walls that glowed. Jewel-toned painted scapes ran along the far edge of what looked to be a cafeteria. “This is the one,” Nicdao thought right then. “This is the picture.”
Salientes and makeup artist Veronica Rae Garrido had Bitagcol’s face painted white and tacked vivid shades of blue and pink onto her eyes, then dressed her in a floor-length gown by designer Patrice Ramos Diaz. Piña bunched at the front in sculptural waves, gathering into neat pleats that ran down to the back of the knees in a large knot. Nicdao photographed Bitagcol just as he and his team imagined: styled to the look of the old world and the new, her moody expression framed by low lights.
The image would remain unpublished in Nicdao’s archive until October 2023, when the Getty Museum posted it on its website to signify its acquisition. It was one of five selected by the museum, including four other portraits Nicdao took of actresses KC Concepcion, Nancy Castiglione, and Iza Calzado, and journalist Melo “Queenmelo” Esguerra. The photographs of Concepcion, Castiglione, and Queenmelo were part of an archiving project he worked on for designer Puey Quiñones in 2008, while the one of Calzado superimposed with an X-ray scan was something experimental he tried for an editorial for the now-defunct men’s magazine Rogue in 2012.
The interest in these pieces’ acquisition all came as a surprise to the photographer, who says it began with an email exchange in 2021. J. Paul Getty Museum curator of photographs Paul Martineau reached out to Nicdao seemingly out of nowhere and asked him to send in a portfolio comprised of 20 images. That the museum had approached him at all was “unreal” in itself. “I said, I’m sorry, if you can wait for it, maybe you can give me three to five months?” he remembers himself responding, laughing. But he wanted to take his time in curating a diverse selection of his work for the museum, “because I had been working as a photographer for almost 22 years [at that point].”
Nicdao had something to show within four months of the timeline he had set for himself, getting back to Martineau with a few more photos than asked. After about two to three weeks of waiting, the museum asked him to print out their selection of five of his images. From there, it was a grueling process that took over two years, between Nicdao’s shows in Paris and Venice and his day-to-day work. As the museum is meticulous with the quality of its prints, Nicdao worked through several until the five images finally made it to Los Angeles safely last year.
But in between that time, he says he never felt discouraged. “I think [Paul Martineau and the curators of the Getty Museum] saw something in my work, in those pictures,” he tells Vogue Philippines, his tone wistful over the phone. “They were telling me when I would send them the prints, oh, Mark, there are two prints that are damaged. But you know what, while we were opening the prints, we all had, like, a collective gasp looking at your photographs.”
The acquisition was already official by October 24, 2023, but Nicdao didn’t know how the process worked, and there was a part of him that wanted it to remain a surprise. It’s funny, he shares, because he wouldn’t have found out that the pieces were available for viewing online until one of his subjects, Queenmelo, sent him the live link. “When it came out online, [I thought], wow, this is unbelievable,” he says. “Because I wouldn’t even dream of it.”
Now, Nicdao couldn’t be more ecstatic. “I just thought, okay, I have the papers,” he breathes in relief. “My work is inside the museum, among historical figures at the Getty vault.” But what excites him the most is what this milestone could mean for the creativity that comes out of the Philippines. “It’s amazing. What a feat. At least we [Filipinos] have something at the Getty Museum.” And it’s only the beginning, he implies. “It’s the opening for a lot of Filipino photographers and artists.”
