First.

To an eternal ally, my deep admiration.

Offering the reader an experience both numinous and unsettling, fled, their faces turned subtitles fragments edited from miscellaneous family photos (mostly taken in the 80s and 90s) with lines violently extricated from their context to create a glossary of dissonant if not poignant gestures and spaces that explore what is left and what is left out, the fleeting and the in-between, the nameless and the invisible, always caught in the very act of meaning and becoming, of being named and being known, never fully arriving, and teetering at the brink of insight and form.

"Ang mga puwang sa isipan ang pinupukaw ng unang aklat ni Christian Tablazon. Hinahayaan niya tayong manahan, nang hindi napapalagay, lagi sa pagi-pagitan: pagitan ng imahen at wika, pagitan ng mga basag na pahayag, pagitan ng mga salita, pagitan ng paghinto at pag-usad, pagitan ng pagkakabuo at pagkabasag, pagitan ng mga kategorya. Sa ganitong paraan at pagpaparaan, napaparanas niya ang pagiging nasa bingit ng hindi ganap na maalala ngunit tila pamilyar, laging nasa bingit ng pag-unawa. Mabisa niyang kinakasangkapan ang katahimikan at patlang para maipahiwatig ang kakanyahan at kabuuan ng bawat tipak, may sapat na pwersa ang bawat isa na nagtutulak pasulong upang makahulagpos sa pigil ng pagsasaaklat." —Allan Popa

Christian Tablazon was born in Manila and raised in Tarlac. He is an instructor at the Department of Humanities of the University of the Philippines Los Banos and a graduate student at the UP Film Institute.