Tubig Alat (Salt Water)

Featuring works by Geela Garcia (Philippines)

Recipient of the 7th Objectifs Documentary Award Emerging Category

Mentored by Jessica Lim

4 April to 18 May 2025

Lower Gallery 1 Objectifs

Free admission

Opening | 4 Apr 2025 12pm – 7pm

All life depends on Salt: An Artist talk with Geela Garcia

Sat 5 Apr 2025 4pm – 5pm | Objectifs Workshop Space (register: https://all-life-depends-on-salt.peatix.com/)

Smoke blankets the room where Emma Ganila has been scooping brine into an assembly line of tin cans. As salt water boils and evaporates in the tins blocks of white salt form. Emma has been making Tultul an artisanal salt only found on Guimaras island.

On Iloilo an island right across Emma's Lorlie Noblezada watches her son John face strong breaking waves as he collects seawater with a bamboo pole to start the process of making Budbud salt.

Emma and Lorlie are some of the last artisanal saltmakers in the Philippines. Both have been safekeeping traditional saltmaking processes for decades. However this craft is in fast decline.

Despite a long history of saltmaking the Philippines an archipelago with the fifth-longest coastline in the world has not produced enough salt for its own needs for the past 15 years. The country has some of the rarest salts in the world including Tultul and Budbud and it only needs to ultilise six percent of its coastline to be self-sufficient in salt. But local salts are on the brink of extinction due to unsupportive policies industry neglect and climate change.

The process of making artisanal salt is time-consuming and laborious but still Emma at 74 spends her day inside the warm and smoky production house to cook blocks of Tultul salt; Lorlie assesses the seasons and checks if the skies are clear to schedule production of Budbud salt. For these matriarchs this craft as much as it is a livelihood is what binds their families' day-to-day living.

All life depends on salt.

Presented by Objectifs

Supported by the Truthseeker Foundation

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About the artist

Geela Garcia is a Filipino photographer and multimedia journalist based in Manila Philippines. Her photographic work which documents stories of women food sovereignty and the environment aims to write history from the experience of its makers.

She received the Seed Award from the Prince Claus Fund in 2023 for her photojournalism work and is currently a Shifting Democracies Fellow at Global Press.

Geela's writing and photography appear on the Thomson Reuters Foundation – Context News South China Morning Post and Rappler among others. She is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo Up Next.

About the Mentor

Jessica Lim is currently the director of Angkor Photo Festival & Workshops (APFW) a non-profit association based in Cambodia. For most of her professional life she has worked to provide support and opportunities to visual storytellers in the majority world. Her move to Cambodia built on her previous experience with Drik Picture Library in Dhaka Bangladesh a media organisation dedicated to advocating for social equality where she served as a news and photo editor and photographer liaison. She majored in journalism and graduated from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in 2006.

Jessica is currently based in Siem Reap Cambodia where on any given day there is a good chance of meeting water buffalos.

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About the Objectifs Documentary Award

The Objectifs Documentary Award champions Objectifs' mission to broaden perspectives through image making by supporting original voices in visual storytelling in Singapore and the wider region. The Award enables photographers to work on new or existing projects encouraging them to tell stories about their native communities. It welcomes different creative approaches to non-fiction storytelling from conventional documentary photography to visual experiments.

About the Truthseeker Foundation

The Truth Seeker Foundation believes that education and enlightenment are the best ways to address many of the social issues we face today. Amongst the many causes the Foundation supports it advocates for raising awareness of social and environmental issues through photography.

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Join us at our related events

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Nature and Spirit: An Artist Talk with Gab Mejia | Sat 5 Apr 2025 2.30pm – 3.30pm at Objectifs Workshop Space (Register: https://nature-and-spirit.peatix.com/)

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Host or Publisher Objectifs - Centre for Photography and Film