Desde el cielo: Real Photo Postcards and the Counter-Archive of Alfonso Ongpin

Abstract This essay examines how Alfonso Ongpin (1885–1975), a Filipino photographer, art conservator, and collector, constructed a vernacular counter-archive in early twentieth-century Manila partially through the use of Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs). It foregrounds the material and social life of these images, offering formal and historical readings of how they challenged the racialised visual regimes of American colonial rule. Drawing on theories of decolonial aesthetics and visual sovereignty, the study shows how Ongpin’s RPPCs intervened in ethnological photography, resisting the objectification of Filipino subjects. By creating a visual grammar of self-fashioning and civic memory, Ongpin’s work enacted a mode of authorship that aligns with counter-archival strategies developed across colonised contexts — particularly among Indigenous American communities — demonstrating how photography could serve as a medium for nationalist expression and political imagination under empire.