"Itauli" is a book that presents a different gaze. The woman's gaze. The feminist's gaze. It's an honest attempt to reframe Cordillera women and stir conversations about their identities and their place in Cordillera history. This book was published in conjunction with the exhibition "Itauli: Early 1990s Cordillera Women in Photographs" at the Museo Kordilyera.
The book contains photographs of Cordillera women taken in the 1990s by Gerry Atkinson of the United Kingdom and Marleen de Korver of the Netherlands. The accompanying text were written by Grace Celeste T. Subido and Ruth M. Tindaan. The choice of two women in the curatorial team was deliberate, I believe.
I liked that the book opened with a brief discussion of Worcester's photographs which were mostly taken by the American with the intention of presenting the Igorots as godless savages that needed to be civilized (preferably by an outside party). Thus creating the idea that colonizing them was a moral duty.
The discussion then touched on the tamer and less politically-driven photographs by Masferre and Hafalla. Then the book transitions to the works of Atkinson and de Korver.
For a really thin book, "Itauli" covered a lot of ground.
*For availability of the book, get in touch with Museo Kordilyera.
