by Joy Rojas

SUNDAY INQUIRER MAGAZINE, February 3, 2002

JOSE Benedict Campos III's ability "to see the world differently from other people" not only explains why he picked photography over previous artistic pursuits like piano or dance ("I'm impulsive, I like things to happen really quickly") but why his pictures look the way they do. At 21, the guy who goes by the nickname Jay takes a portrait as if he were writing a story, and finds art and emotion even in the most mundane of things.

 "A lot of people tell me, oh, you're young; when you get old you'll specialize and find your niche," says Jay, a veteran of four diverse one-man exhibitions and numerous fashion shoots for Metro magazine. "But it's so hard for me to focus on one thing because I always like looking around. I wish I could show all faces or objects, but that's not who I am. I like running around with my camera and when I see something that captivates my eye, I photograph it. And I don't just try to come up with pretty images but pictures with something deeper behind them."

Such was the case of "Balance Within," Jay's recent solo show held in cooperation with the Canadian Embassy at the Hiraya Gallery in Ermita, Manila. Spawned from a private journal in which he "would draw acrylic lines through the words," the photographer's fifth one-man effort features 30 colored images of people, places and things shot outside the Philippines, each one with a vertical line running over it. More than just a visual accent, the digitally added lines give a whole new meaning to a portrait or scenery.

"It can create boundaries. If it splits through a person, it might mean choosing sides. A line can be seen as a path sometimes," says Jay, who used a Canon and Polaroid to capture his rich collection. "But it's not always about me and how I see the line. I'd like people to figure out how they see the line in relation to the subject and themselves." Jay, in fact, welcomes all kinds of interpretations: in lieu of providing individual titles for each photo, he listed down a series of possible explanations ("The line compares," "The line is a reflection of the past," "We can all create our own lines") and had visitors decide which description suited which image best.

"I didn't want to spoonfeed the works to the audience," he reasons. "I wanted them to think for themselves. And if they come back another day, the descriptions would have changed, so by looking at the photo again they might get another insight into it."

Not one to fall under a predictable category himself (his works and personality have been described as "chameleon-like"), Jay is wont to cross over lines that confine his self-expression. He is comfortable shooting anything ("Photography is all about capturing light on film," he argues, "so what's the point of limiting yourself to just fashion or architecture?"), and doesn't just study photography but a host of subjects at his liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts. "What I learned from college," he says, "is to question everything."

Interestingly, Jay, who comes from a business-oriented family and was briefly enrolled at the University of Asia and the Pacific, appears inclined to try it out himself in the future, perhaps through a consulting company. "Photography is about business, in a sense," he notes. "And business relates to everything."  What's the one line that remains a constant in this chameleon's life? "Art," Jay declares, "no matter what, will always be with me."