“Retouching” Papa’s old photo from the 1930s

For my dad’s birthday today I’m sharing an old photo of him taken sometime in the 1930s.

He is wearing what is often referred to as a “mcintosh” suit, pronounced macintosh, which apparently is a brand of suits with a tradition dating back to the late 1800s. Filipino men wore them for photos taken from the farms they worked on or in photo studios in the cities.

The Manong generation was a migration of Filipinos to the United States when the Philippines was an American colony. During the 1920s and 30s, Filipinos rode ships to the US and worked on farms, ships, canneries, and more from Hawaii, California, Alaska, and other areas.

My dad arrived in San Francisco on May 1, 1929. It turns out that 41 years earlier, Philippine national hero Jose Rizal arrived in the same city! Though one visited to live, the other for travel.

I’m named after my dad, but he was so old when I was born I hardly got to know him before he passed. Luckily I kept some of his old black and white photos, some probably 90 years old. I like to add color to them once in a while. Maybe it’s a way for me to connect with him, and a way for me to connect him to you too?

In the “retouched” photo, I added aspects from his home province of Camiguin in Northern Mindanao. I added leaves and fruit of the lanzones tree, native to the island and a popular fruit especially enjoyed during the Lanzones festival.

I also added a lesser known resident of Camiguin, the Camiguin Kulasisi, also known as the Camiguin hanging parrot.

Happy birthday Papa!

Manong references: the late Dawn B. Mabalon, and her publications Little Manila is in the Heart and Filipinos in Stockon.

Read more about my research on my dad’s history here.