The Story Behind
A brief and mostly accurate account of how a small press became a house for photographs, told in seven chapters. Narrated, with some reluctance, by the management.
The Press
It began, as most respectable enterprises do, with a name that sounded important and a plan that did not yet exist. The name was Retrograde Press. The plan was to make beautiful printed things for people who appreciate that sort of thing.
There were four of us, one borrowed table, and an unreasonable quantity of stationery. For a while, it went well. Then somebody brought a camera, and the paper never quite recovered.
Inventory at the time: four people, one table, a great deal of paper, no regrets.
The Studio
The first pivot was a studio, and it did not stay where we put it. We packed the lights, the backdrop and a camera into a car, and set them up in the corner of somebody else’s celebration.
It was meant to be a small thing for the guests to do between courses. The line for the studio was longer than the line for the buffet. It was longer than the line for the cake. Prints were handed out while they were still warm.
The cake, to its credit, took it well.
The Guestbook
A photograph can show that someone was there. It cannot tell you what they wanted to say. So, next to the studio, we installed a telephone.
Guests picked up the receiver and left a message on video: a toast, a story, a piece of advice nobody had asked for. People who would not pose for a portrait turned out to have a great deal to say to a telephone.
Average length of a message: longer than planned.
The Roving Press
The studio and the telephone shared one weakness: they stayed in their corner, and the party did not. The best moments kept happening on the other side of the room, well out of reach of our lighting.
So we sent the photographers out to find them. They worked the room the way a press photographer would, and the prints followed minutes later. A press, at last, in the proper sense of the word.
Strictly speaking, we had been a press all along. We had simply been standing still.
The Bellhop
By now there was a studio, a telephone, and a small fleet of photographers at large in other people’s parties. The name on the door covered none of it. We needed one with room inside: for the booths, the prints, the boxes of cards, and whatever we had not thought of yet.
We kept coming back to the grand old hotels. The lobby with its brass and its bell on the desk. The elevator that takes its time. And the bellhop, in a pressed uniform, who takes your bags before you have set them down and knows which floor you want. Nobody remembers checking in. Everybody remembers being looked after.
That was the job, as it turned out. So we polished the bell, pressed the uniforms, and hung a new name over the door: the House of Bellhop.
The elevator was, regrettably, not included. We have installed one in spirit.
The First Edition
The House opened with something new on the shelf: a photobooth that deals cards. Guests step in, and step out holding a trading card of themselves, sleeved and ready for the binder. We called it The First Edition, and gave it a room of its own.
Hit points, type and attacks are chosen by the guest. The management accepts no liability.
The Revolution
Here is what we understood, at last, after all the detours: photography in the Philippines deserved better service than it was getting. Not better cameras; people have cameras. Better care.
Photographers who arrive early and remember your name. Prints in your hand before the dessert is cleared. A gallery that is private, because your memories are not a public utility. It is a quiet sort of revolution, conducted in neat uniforms, with excellent posture.
We have no flags. We have lighting.
Please, come in. Mind the doors.
House of Bellhop