Jason Reblando will share a survey of his photography to date, including the series “Home and Away” and “Bataan Death March.” In "Home and Away," Jason explores various aspects of the Filipino diaspora, such as the lives of overseas Filipino workers, citizens of the Philippines who work abroad for years at a time to support their families back home, and permanent migrants such as his parents who emigrated to the United States and became citizens. His work is concerned with the overlapping themes of how Filipinos invest in the idea of “home” despite being separated from family often by great distances.
During Jason Reblando’s time as a Fulbright scholar in the Philippines, his photographs addressed the long legacy of Spanish, American, and Japanese imperialism in the Philippines. Capturing the residue of colonization everywhere in ordinary life, whether it be in the green scarf worn by a Boy Scout, the highway markers that commemorate the WWII Bataan Death March, or the people who swim in the Subic Bay that has been a controversial site of American military power. In the photo series “Bataan Death March” Jason Reblando follows the route of the Bataan Death March, the forced march undertaken by Filipino and American soldiers upon their surrender to the Imperial Japanese Army during the early stages of World War II. Originating at two points on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines, the entire eighty-seven miles of the march are commemorated with modest concrete kilometer markers located everywhere from the sidewalks of neighborhoods to town squares to the edges of rice plantations. While retracing the route, Jason photographed everyday Filipinos that he met along the way and imagined that these same townspeople could have been civilians who were punished or killed by the Japanese army for attempting to aid the Filipino and American soldiers that endured the march. The views of the Philippine countryside may have been the sole, or possibly last, visual solace the soldiers experienced when they were held captive and forced to endure wartime atrocities on the Bataan Peninsula.
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Jason Reblando is an artist and photographer based in Normal, Illinois. He received his MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, and a BA in Sociology from Boston College. He is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines, an Artist Fellowship Award from the Illinois Arts Council, and a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. His work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Politico, Camera Austria, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, Marketplace, MAS Context, Real Simple, Places Journal, Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Reader. His photographs are collected in the Library of Congress, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Pennsylvania State University Special Collections, the Midwest Photographers Project of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is currently serving on the Society for Photographic Education Board of Directors (2022-2026) and is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Wonsook Kim School of Art at Illinois State University.
Jason Reblando’s website: https://www.jasonreblando.com/
Co-hosted by the Department of Art (ART 5995 Image Makers) in collaboration with the Center of Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies.
This event is free and open to the public.
