Photo courtesy of Manny Crisostomo. Retrieved from today.ucsd.edu

Excerpt from today.ucsd.edu

For thousands of years, the people of the Pacific Islands have voyaged via canoe near and far, deeply connected to signals from the stars above and the subtlest of shifts in the ocean below to help navigate their journey. Manny Crisostomo, Guam’s first and only Pulitzer-prize winning photojournalist, channels these ancestors as he travels the world to capture Indigenous and Pacific Islander people.

“We as islanders weren’t just going to settle by staying on our little rock; we wanted to explore, exchange and share,” said Crisostomo, who is an advocate and documentarian of Chamorro people—those who originate from the Mariana Islands. “Our ancestors have been voyagers for millennia. I’m one of those voyagers 4,000 years later—except I get on an airplane, it’s a little faster!”

Crisostomo will speak about what he has discovered during his wayfinding, how he is chronicling his culture and who Chamorro people are as the featured keynote for UC San Diego’s Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Celebration kickoff event on May 10. The 17th annual celebration will also honor undergraduate and graduate scholarship winners and feature entertainment by KOTX, UC San Diego’s K-Pop dance group, the Huapala Sweetheart Dancers, and a blessing by Imahen Taotao Tano. Throughout the month of May, numerous other events will be held to recognize the contributions and achievements of Asian and Pacific Islander American people including an art reception, film festival, music performances, lectures and more.

Artistic expression meets living cultural anthropology

For more than four decades, Crisostomo has honed his eye for the decisive moment, that instant when emotion peaks among his subjects. He describes his work as “a mix of photojournalism, artistic expression and living cultural anthropology.” These moments have ranged from a graceful ballerina leaping through the air onstage to teenage girls sharing a cigarette in an inner-city school and a young child scaling a fish in a refugee camp. Even when depicting daily life or a candid moment behind-the scenes, each image holds a fascinating narrative.

Currently Crisostomo is drawn to “people that look like me, places that are all too familiar and events that form and shape my cultural identity.” A native of Guam—the largest and most populous of the Mariana Islands—his latest project involves collecting photographs he has taken over the past 45 years and collaboratively curating 400 of them to be featured in a book and exhibit for a major museum titled “Wayfinding: My Personal Pasifika.” Part of this collection will be shown at the Cross-Cultural Center at UC San Diego throughout the month, with an artist reception from 2-3 p.m. on Wednesday, May 10.