Cristina "Tinay" Palabay

She is a human rights activist, the Secretary General of a large organization called Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), and she is in Portland on a speaking tour advocating US divestment from the Duterte regime in the Philippines. She has the courage openly to discuss the fact that many of her colleagues have been murdered, imprisoned, tortured and/or disappeared by the regime. She herself has been threatened. I asked her how she has avoided being killed. She said her community is so strong and so large that killing her would not help the regime; the work would go on. But then, with a laugh, she added wryly, “But it’s a good idea to get some photographs now, because you never know.” 

Her bio reads, “Palabay has been a political activist since her student days at the University of the Philippines, as Secretary General of the Nationwide Alliance of UP Student Councils and later on as the National President of the National Union of Students of the Philippines. She is also known for her advocacy for women’s rights as among the founders and later on the Secretary General of the Gabriela Women’s Party. Palabay is also a lesbian activist, being a Board Member of Kapederasyon, an organization of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders in the Philippines.”

I am humbled by the honor of being asked to create some portraits of her that can be used by her organization and by the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. I feel I'm one of the luckiest people in the world, to be asked to make photographs of people working for change. Since I was a child, this is the work I dreamed of doing; at last it has come to me. (I've added a couple of Extras with different moods.)