Born in 1976, Juan Caguicla studied Visual Communications at the University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts. Discovering photography, he threw himself into the medium and started shooting professiona studying lly while still finishing his degree in school. Finding that his studies were hampering his education, he left and sold his electric guitars to acquire his first proper camera.



Primarily a fashion photographer and preferring mostly to indulge in black-and-white for his work, Caguicla’s photographs are meticulously crafted shadow plays that suggest dramas that far exceed the given frame, that draw as much from the cinemas of film noir and the nouvelle vague as they do the paintings of Jojo Legaspi. In his pictures, his subjects are eidolons that haunt the strange settings, apocalyptic nymphs that play parts in Caguicla’s visions.

By Erwin T. Romulo, as published in the Philippine Star, November 2005

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