Jun de Leon: This Bad Boy is hot!
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| He has never been late to a shoot, not even once, because for him it is a sign of respect. He has a notorious reputation for being hot-tempered and shouting on set, because he says he is not articulate. |
He was once looked at as the “Bad Boy of Photography” with his salt
and pepper hair, white shirt and jeans look, women, drugs and his
flaring temper. He has been at the top of his game for 39 years and
counting. He is a well-loved man who has only the highest respect from
everyone he has worked with. Here are 10 things you should know about
the master, Jun de Leon.
1. His passion for photography began in his college years as a
photojournalist for the Philippine Daily Express. On his very first
assignment, he had to do an investigative report on drug users and
prostitutes, and he went as far as taking the drugs himself.
“I had to work and study at the same time to pay for my tuition,” Jun
recalls. He was a fine arts student in UST and initially wanted to
study architecture (“but I was so bad at math”), tried out painting
(“but I was so lousy”), then settled on advertising, where he
encountered photography. It was then that he started to balance going to
school during the day and, armed with a second-hand Pentax from his
mom, he covered the police beat at midnight. He would just take catnaps
in the bunk beds at work, only to be woken up to shoot mostly dead
people. “Can you imagine? I’m a slave to beauty, but then I had to
photograph people getting killed or Carriedo being bombed. For me,
violence is ugly.”
He says he took his first assignment as a challenge, saying that he
felt his superiors at the Daily Express didn’t think he could do it. He
was tasked to do an in-depth documentation on drug users and prostitutes
in Olongapo and when he got back to Manila and submitted the photos,
they told him, “Never do this again.” In his portfolio, there is one
shot taken by one of the drug users where Jun is down, after having been
given a dose by the users themselves. To be able to take photos of
them, he decided to blend in. “Tinurukan nila ako. Bagsak ako, di ako
addict eh. I had to get their trust.”
In his almost decade-long stint with the publication, Jun received
two Photojournalist of the Year Awards. “I owe a lot to that experience,
whatever I’m doing now was sharpened by news photography. Instinct mo
na yan dapat. Your camera becomes your extension.”
2. Before photography turned digital, he used to burn all his
negatives at the end of every year. Yes, all. “I have no attachment to
the past,” he claims.
“The problem with me is if you ask me about the past, I have no
attachment to the past.” He says that if you ask any of the senior
models, they will confirm that because it was such a hassle for him to
compile all his negatives neatly, he would just burn them all. From
shots taken in his Daily Express days to his first editorials, and even
to portraits of Marcos. To this day, he shares that his work has never
overwhelmed him and that he is not his biggest fan. It is the creation
of the photo that he loves and gets a high from, not after achieving the
image. “Mas excited ako to go forward,” he explains.
3. On the move from news photography to fashion photography: “Obvious naman that I love women.”
He recalls that his move to fashion happened during the time that now-STAR Lifestyle editor Millet Mananquil
gave him the chance to shoot for Express Week, the Sunday magazine of
the Daily Express. “I love women, I love their quirks, their temper,
their smell, lahat,” Jun declares with a sly smile. So between taking
photos of women versus killings, the choice became obvious.
Even when he had no coverage, he remembers his editors would tell
him, “Jun, kailangan namin ng babae,” to be then put on the front page
of the paper as a sort of break from all the hard news. “I discovered
Alma Moreno on the street,” he reveals. “I saw her, I said, ‘I find you
beautiful, can I take your photo?’ I shot her and she was put on the
cover. The next thing you know, San Miguel endorser na siya.”
4. The word “father” has meant a lot in Jun’s life. His
father died when he was five; he admits to being an “absent” father
himself at some point in his life; but he’s learned from his mistakes,
and is making up for them, all of which inspired him to do the book Our
Father.
Jun has eight children whose ages range from 35 to 10: Christine,
Patricia, Oliver, Timothy, Katrina, Nikkolo, Isabella, and Irijah. He
admits to being a much better father figure now than he was with his
older kids. “When I got separated, I knew it was going to be painful but
not that painful.” He admitted to immersing himself even more into
photography, getting heavily into drugs, and having an angry phase. “I
realized that after so much absence, I cannot be a father anymore, that I
should be a friend.” Now, as a family, they go bowling, wake boarding,
and do all these other activities like barkadas would. He drives his
youngest son to school every morning. He even shares that when his
daughters go through a breakup, they always go back to “the original
boyfriend,” their dad. “It was only after Isa that I realized I can be a
good father,” he opens up.
Though he describes growing up without a father as “very difficult,”
Jun says he was ambitious and driven. The second of four kids, he
recalled that his dad, a lawyer/policeman/ TOYM awardee, had a huge
library with a big sign that read, “I crave for respect.” “How do you
get respect? You give it first,” he simply says.
Fast forward to 2008, it was his daughter Katrina’s graduation, and
when she asked him to go to her graduation, he insisted that he doesn’t
go to events. “Dad, I just need to talk to you. Don’t wear your white
T-shirt, but you can wear your rubber shoes,” he recalls her saying. So
he went. They called the surnames under letter “D”; nothing. Letter “L”;
still nothing. Until it reached letter “X” and Jun decided to have a
cigarette outside. He remembers thinking to himself, “Baka di grumaduate
kaya she has to talk to me.” Until the emcee of the graduation called
onstage all the parents of the Top 20. “Eh crybaby ako eh!” Jun says of
that proud moment with tears rushing down his face. “Habang sinasabitan
ko siya ng medal, she said ‘Dad, bear with the silver, walang gold this
year.’” It was then he realized that he had to finish his book, Our
Father.
He was inspired to do a book on fathers wherein he would shoot every
father that would enter his studio, along with sons or daughters. “I’d
shoot for 10 minutes, the coffee time was two hours,” he recalls. From
fathers with regular jobs, to businessmen, to celebrities, to
lieutenants — he shot them all. “Thirty-two lang yung target ko, naging
52. And everyone had a story to tell,” he shares.
5. He proposed to his wife Abbygale Arenas in the most
unromantic but most real manner: by showing his assets, liabilities,
strengths and weaknesses.
It started from him taking her photo. “You have to understand that
photographers are human beings too, and I love women, and gaganda ng mga
kinukunan ko,” Jun shares. He had something of an image then of being a
womanizer and a bad boy when they got together, and he remembers the
whole fashion industry being against the relationship. (Their age gap is
over 15 years.) He now jokes, “I thought we were friends!” They
eventually got together, and two years into the relationship, his
daughter Patricia told him, “Dad, if you can’t make this relationship
work, you’re not capable of any relationship.” Egged on by the threat,
he said, “Okay, let’s buy a ring.”
He shares that he has learned from his mistakes in the past; that he
had to put together what Abby wanted and what he could offer in order
for it to work. And he proposed marriage to her with these words:
“Here’s my savings, here’s what I own, here’s what I spend to support my
family, here’s my earnings. I want to marry you. Don’t say yes, think
about it. I want to be a choice, not an option.”
The deal was to not see or talk to each other for a week, but on the
third day, she gave her answer. “Yes, I want to marry you. Ang guapo ko!
Feeling Aga Muhlach!”
He made Abby choose between a nice wedding or a honeymoon every year.
She chose the latter (of course.) Jun made a grand plan wherein he had a
shoot in Dubai, got Abby as his model, but they flew two days earlier,
and held their wedding at a Christian church with all of seven guests.
“I thought I had everything, and then I met Abby. It has been the
best 15 years of my life,” he says with a big smile while holding up his
hand to show his wedding band.
6. Jun de Leon in numbers:
120: Square meters of his current studio in Bonifacio Global City.
3: Number of times a week he works out, plus he spends one weekend a month in Cam Sur to go wake boarding.
20-plus: Cigarettes he smokes a day. “But I never finish one whole, patay sindi ako.”
150: In millimeter s, his favorite lens to use.
13: Books published in total, the latest one being the Coke: 100
Years of Happiness coffee table book where a majority of the concepts
were done on the spot by him and PR maven Keren Pascual. “We shot 104
people in eight days.”
7. He has remained relevant through almost four decades
because he has invested time, effort and money into the best equipment
and training. And he dreams of having a critic.
Every year, he goes to the Palm Springs Photo Festival to attend the
one-week mentorship program with the masters (he has learned from the
likes of Graciela Iturbide, Vincent Laforet and Andreas Bitesnich).
“From the moment they wake up to the time they sleep, you just observe
them,” he shares. On top of that, he also researches and invests in
top-of-the-line equipment for his work. (He currently uses a Phase One
medium format camera system.) “I never stop. Photography for me is
horizon after horizon after horizon.”
On critics: “That is one thing we need in this country, legitimate
critics.” He differentiates personal opinion from a professional critic
who can really tell you why a photo is bad. “People say I’m good but I
don’t believe it. Never believe your own press release,” he declares.
8. On the influx of DSLR users and the overuse of Photoshop:
“If you are a photographer, do not rely on Photoshop. When you shoot it,
make it true to your vision.”
He says that there is nothing wrong with anyone who has a camera
shooting pictures, but being a photographer is different. “I have no
condescending attitude towards anyone who wants to be a photographer.
You can shoot, get hooked up with magazines, that’s so easy now. It’s
staying there that is another thing.” He even shares that funny saying,
“Wala sa pana yan, nasa Indian.” He says that having started with analog
photography, he and the other photographers of his time know how to
light properly. He says that in this “torrent generation,” a lot tend to
forget about the romantic component of photography. “It’s your pride as
a photographer, you want to see it right without having to rely on
Photoshop. My 10-year-old son can Photoshop, so how do you separate the
men from the boys?”
9. He has never been late to a shoot, not even once, because
for him it is a sign of respect. He has a notorious reputation for being
hot-tempered and shouting on set, because he says he is not articulate.
He is one photographer who comes on set three hours before the actual
shoot to set up, so that when the people get there, everything is
ready. And one must never be late to his set, or else they will hear it
from him. “You don’t rob people of their time, like I don’t want to be
robbed of mine. I want to make it as easy as possible for my subject,”
he says.
Many people have told him that his reputation precedes him, and he
says that some people do not understand how he works. The night before
the shoot, everything is set. The lighting design is planned, the final
vision for the shoot is clear in his head, down to what he will wear to
the shoot being laid out on his bed. “Precision,” Jun says.
“I’m a visual person, I think in pictures. I’m not articulate which
is why I have that temper, because I cannot express what I see,” he
reveals. In some hot-tempered bouts years ago, he would go as far as
throwing clothes if they weren’t ironed, and even throwing his camera.
“The hardest language to articulate is photography. Paano ko mae-explain
lahat ng nakikita ko? I see it in my mind, its clear, naka-frame. My
mind is exploding, I want the vision done, and I don’t have the words to
explain it.”
10. For him, he has photographed everyone he has wanted to photograph.
“I’ve done all the presidents from Marcos to P-Noy. If you’ve gone
from Gloria Romero to Kathryn (Bernardo) and Julia (Montes), Ninoy
Aquino to Baby James, what can I expect? I’ll handle it tomorrow,” he
says, yet again looking forward. When the late President Corazon Aquino
was already sick, she graciously requested him to take what would be
their last family portrait. “And before her death, she showed that
picture we took and said, ‘This is how I want to look,’” he reveals.
A project he still dreams of doing? A book on the different shades of white. To be shot in Antarctica.
* * *
It is rare to see a man with so much passion for what he does that
the line between his work and his life blurs. He has earned so much
respect in the industry because he has so much respect for his craft and
for other people, that it is unthinkable to not accord him the same
level of respect. At 56 years of age, despite all that he has achieved,
he has never praised himself; instead the praise is given to him by
others. “I just keep on shooting. I wanna die shooting, and on my death
bed, naka-duct tape and camera sa kamay ko. I will shoot my last frame,”
he says. While we all dream that such a moment will be far from now,
Jun’s almost-maniacal zest for life continues. “I love life! I live and
learn, live and learn, live and learn.”
