In 1922, Don Ramon Roces was plagued by an idea: Photo News. He believed that pictures conveyed messages and facts more clearly and more quickly; photographs reported the news better than text. He experimented with two publications that demonstrated his concept—Photo News, the first trilingual publication in English,...

DON RAMON PARDO ROCESPublisher, Graphic & Graphic Weekly1927-1941; 1948-1965 In the early decades of American colonial rule in the Philippines, there were rich and influential Hispanic-Filipino families who invested in publishing. One of them was the Roces clan. The family pioneered the establishment of newspaper chains, a venture begun...

I have always been interested in where modern Philippine culture began, how it spread, and what images were used to represent the nation. Print media is central to that history. Before television and the internet, magazines helped Filipinos imagine the country. As an art historian who studies Philippine...