A short while ago I wrote a blog about the Hundred Heroines website and, more recently, about the Photographers Gallery in London. By happy coincidence the two came together today when I received an email from Hundred Heroines which highlighted the work of Hannah Reyes Morales at almost exactly the same time as I came across a reference to her on the Photographers Gallery website. It reminded me of the startling work she has done in documenting life (largely but not exclusively) in the Phillipines, her home country.

Born in Manila she graduated in Communications. During her studies she was able to take an internship for the “European Pressphoto” agency, doing daily news reports from her country.  This allowed her to follow her interest in photography which she had developed as a teenager. As she grew up and developed her own view she realised that all the photographs she saw of her country and its' history were through the eyes of Americans who had occupied the country for many years. She determined then to show a different Phillipines to the world. The one she knew and lived in, for better and for worse.

Starting her career as a documentary photojournalist at the time of the Phillipine government's war on drugs, where many where killed willy nilly could have been too daunting. But Morales was not deterred from taking hard hitting pictures of bodies and blood in her series "Season of Darkness". Her work in the men only Manila City Jail (see this NYTimes report) that followed was equally disturbing with the men suffering overcrowded, unhygienic and sometimes violent situations. She has talked about having to deny her feminity during this time in order to neutralise herself in the environments she was inhabiting which must have been extremely challenging for her as a young woman.

Working in such challenging environments (she has also covered the war in Mirawi and homelessness in the Phillipines) she also determined herself to focus on the making of safe spaces for people, especially women and children. Her later work on Living Lullabies and Redefining Beauty takes a closer look at these whilst her series on the Eagle Hunters of  the Kazakh nomads shows what a consumate documentary maker she is.

Her work for National Geographic, The Atlantic and worldwide news and print channels has built her reputation. Her many awards including the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award in 2019 and the 2020 Infinity Award cements that and places her, young though she still may be, among the best documentary photojurnalists in the world today. You can see an interview arranged through the Photographers Gallery here and judge for yourself.