News feature: Richard Guzman: photographer, Ibanag

By Benjie S. De Yro

Saturday 14th of April 2012

Even before Cagayan Valley Governor Alvaro Antonio stated that Cagayanos, “should never settle for mediocrity,” Richard Guzman of Tuguegarao City have already shown to the world that Cagayanos can hold a class of their own.

Chang to friends, he was the unofficial yet acclaimed caving photography guru in the Philippines by Manila-based photographers. Not to be easily outdone, the Cagayano photographers now call him the more prestigious, "Father of Caving Photography."

So just what’s in a name? Plenty, it seems.

That’s how he was billed in a six-month run caving photography exhibit which is a tribute to the man whose photographs of caves in the province somehow invited curiosity and awareness of archaeology in Cagayan.

“Nobody officially proclaimed him as such. Yet, the country’s caving photographers have always bowed to this Ibanag pioneer and bestowed the title on him. That’s more important if you are acknowledged by your own peers and not by people or organizations who know nothing about the art,” Manila-based Cagayano broadcaster Rene Cepeda, a close friend of Guzman said.

As one of the siblings of a rich businessman in the city, Richard was given the opportunity to pursue the very art he wanted: photography and music.

Then a hobby of the rich and famous because of the expensive equipment and post production equipment involved, it can be said that he was a trendsetter.

“He loves nature very much. While he has other works, there are two major subjects very visible from his lens; the caves of Callao and the Atta ( Agay) of Cagayan Valley,” Pio Munoz, a member of the Sierra Madre Outdoor Club (SMOC) said.

Such photographs in the more expressive black and white prints have been on display at the Cagayan Museum showroom for the last three decades or so.

It was through the Mount Dos Cuernos (the highest peak in Cagayan) Mountaineering Club , the frontrunner of SMOC that Richard saw the height of his artistry as he mastered every angle, composition, lighting and treatment for his photographs, now considered classics, yet unappreciated in their own rights by the locals.

“The photo exhibit as a tribute to Chang is very timely. It came at a point when today’s generation no longer knew him as an expert, as a Cagayano and as an artist,” Cepeda said.

In fact, some photographers and magazines in Manila are guilty of using Chang’s works without giving him credit. His famous photo, according to Cepeda, is that shot of himself while rapelling inside one of his favorite caves in Callao. It showed him in a suspended animation while negotiating a point-to-point of a cave dangling from a rope.

As a frustrated photographer, I once asked his secret as an ace caving photographer.

“To each his own, Benz. Either you excel or you don’t. The point is, whatever is your chosen field of interest, you better excel it in or you have no right to be there,” Richard said.

The outdoor has always been his life until his last breath in 2010 when a bullet claimed him. It was this love for the outdoors that provided close encounters with the Agays of Penablanca and adjacent areas. Just look at some of his photographs!

There’s an old woman smoking the Cagayan matalag cigar, children swimming in the river, three women in ascending order in a bamboo stairs, a close-up of an ecstatic newlywed Ibanag couple, the Agay and his family, a silhouette shot of a fisherman with his spear holding the day’s catch, on top of a boulder overlooking what was probably the Penablanca or Baggao wilds - the list is endless and timeless.

As a true-blue artist, Guzman had his own share of tantrums and moods. Friends recall that he would stay in a room the whole day listening to his kind of music. “Vexation to the spirit,” he would say.

Among his generation, he was one of the first to purchase some of the latest modern photography and music equipment and paraphernalia hereabouts. But he never bragged about them.

Now, it can be said that one of the reasons for the early popularity of the then Mt. Dos Cuernos to its present name SMOC are the photos of Guzman.

It will take some time and experience before today's young artists could hold a candle to Richard. Cagayano talents should listen from Guzman: there are no small lenses, only small artists.