About

P A R I R A L A

pah - ree - rah - lah

“Phrase” // “Fragment”

Ay lipon ng mga salita na hindi buo ang diwa.

A group of words that is not a complete thought.

Wala itong simuno o panaguri.

It does not have a subject or a predicate.

Wala itong bantas.

It does not have an ending punctuation.

The process of capturing a photograph is never complete. 

It is all that I can fit through the viewfinder at any given point in time.

I focus the lens. 

I set the right aperture. 

I choose the shutter speed. 

I take a deep breath. 

The shutter engages. 

Then all the light reflected in that fraction of a second imprints itself into a frame of silver. 

The moment happens. 

Then the world goes on.

***

What does the name mean?

Parirala is a native (at least I know it is not of Spanish origin) Filipino word that means "sentence fragment". I chose this name because it holds many different layers of meaning.

- Photographs are a capturing of a particular place at a particular time. It is not the lived experience, and is simply a fragment of it.

- It is a word in my first language (Tagalog) that even Filipinos don't normally encounter. I still find it difficult to pronounce. Saying it out loud causes people to be subservient: making people unknowingly speak a word in my native tongue is empowering. A slight nudge to centuries of colonialism and I will gladly enjoy it.

- It also contains 83.33% of the letters of my name in it :D

- The logo is written in Baybayin script. This is one of the pre-Colonial writing systems of the Philippines.