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Philippine
Daily Inquirer Gateway's
De Los Reyes: Collecting vintage paintings and photographs "If not manning his corporate network, chances are businessman Geronimo B, de los Reyes, Jr. is busy with his more than 3000 pieces of vintage paintings and photographs.
De los Reyes, 58, is Chairman of Gateway Property Holdings, which owns P 1.3 - Billion, 174-hectare industrial estate in Barangay Javalera, General Trias, Cavite. He has put together the pictures "to recapture for the present and future generation of Filipinos the glorious past of the Philippines."
The entire collection is a composite of the works of photographers from the 1880s to the 1930s. One of them is the original picture of the execution of Dr. Jose Rizal at the Luneta, which will be used by Malacaņang for the centennial celebration of Philippine Independence in June 1998.
De los Reyes also has a treasury of rare handmade and carve carriage clocks from France and Italy, a number of them handcrafted in the 18th century. He has a collection of antique maps and hand carve imperial yellow glass pieces from China and various shapes and sizes, some of them over 200 years old.
If de los Reyes has this fascination for history, that is probably because he is a great grandson of Crisanto M. de los Reyes, a prominent businessman who supported the Philippine revolution in Cavite. The paintings bespeak of his roots, if not his soul".
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Daily Inquirer Lifestyle By: Joan Orendain " Over and over again have Filipinos seen the same archival photos of slices of life at the turn of the century reprinted in books and newspapers. From 1904 through the Second World War, there is barely anything other than those preserved by the old trading houses of their bodegas and buildings, and a few of old Intramuros. A heavy feast for the eyes, then, and the soul, is the Geronimo B. de los Reyes Jr. collection of photos spanning the years from 1880 to 1953. Rare, and never before publicly viewed, the vintage collection was unveiled to the person on National Heroes' Day at the Gateway Business Park in General Trias in Cavite. The richest among the treasure trove are those reproduced from stereo-optical cards taken by an American photo news service, Underwood and Underwood. Not only do they depict the life and times of Filipinos and Americans in that era, they are soulful studies of Filipinos then -- men and women at war and at peace. One learns, only from the photos, that a terrible earthquake destroyed many houses and churches in Manila in 1880, when this collection's documentation commences. The two most amusing photographs are that of a street scene -- Escolta -- with a wooden building bearing two signs. The first, "dentist" and alongside it, "laughing gas" History and its missing threads are surely painstakingly and expensively woven together in this fine collection." ___________________________________________________ A
candid photographs of how our hero Jose Rizal was shot down by
Filipinos! "A few weeks ago, this writer helicoptered to Gateway Business Park to view the portion of Gene's extensive collection which is on display there. The collector had painstakingly put those pricelss photographs together by scouring the world, for negatives and prints.The result is a retrieving glimpse into our past, culled from sources not just in our islands, but in the United States and Europe. Photographers from the 1880s to the 1930s had ammassed thousand of pictures, but these had been aquirrelled away in private homes, dusty and boarded up files in abondoned studios, and in various libraries. Gene de los Reyes and his "agents" combed the globe sniffing out those irreplaceable pictures. About a hundred photographs in the collection come from a fellow named A. Honniss. De los Reyes enaerthed more than 2000 pictures snapped at the turn of the century by several photojournalists belonging to the American photos chronicling the early Commonwealth years were compiled from the archives of Raymond Moulin who had turned Manila in the course of a trip to the Orient in the mid-1930s. Honiss had been an American professional photographer with studios located in the Escolta, who had made his living selling his photos to magazine publishers in Europe and the United States. Underwood and Underwood specialized in producing stereo-optical cards. De los Reyes and his researchers tracked down some of the millions of three-dimensional commercial views which had been supplied to American churches, parlors and lecture halls. The Underwood teams not only documented the US-Filipino battles of 1898-1901, but went on to compile an extensive record of Philippine life to as late as the 1930s. They also secured a hoard of photos taken during the Spanish colonial period. De los Reyes' dream is to eventually publish a book sheding new light on our history, utilizing those photographs. ("Which don't lie")." ____________________________________________________ Philippine
Graphic December 3, 1994 Past Revisited "To realize that these photographs are now in the Philippine is to feel a king of patriotic thrill and a sense of awe. In these black and white images of forebears and native land is our legacy: the shape and spirit of a nation a-borning, the thrust and appeal of our common heritage and history. Add to these more bonus points in the collection of photographs covering the decade from 1880 from 1890 by an Escolta-based American photographer, A. Honiss. His pictures, rendered in sepia, are mostly of landscapes, riverscapes and go-downs (bodegas) belonging to the business houses, mostly British, of that era. And yet more points for the French-American Raymond Moulin's dozen or so pictures, circa 1930-1935. The centerpiece, as it were, of the lavish photographic display is the photograph of the Rizal execution by firing squad at Bagumbayan. The original print was found in a flea market in Pensylvania in 1979, captioned "Execution of a famous doctor in the Philippine islands." He purchased it forthwith for the grand price of 25 cents. One does not ask what de los Reyes paid when he purchased it from Silva year. Geronimo B. de los Reyes' motivation in continuing to acquire and mount vintage photographs is at once lofty and grounded in Philippine reality: "To recapture for the present and future generations that glorious era of the nation's history; to make them proud of their heritage and inspire them to emulate the Filipinos of those times." And so we thank him for this rich gift. As we muddle on to the next millennium and only add more murky pages to our history, it does the soul good to be reminded that yes, we were poor, but yes, we were always a proud race. Look upon these soul-stirring photographs and take heart, ye poor in spirit!."
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