‘On Collective Longing’ by Gaia Bernabe-Belvis
23-year-old photographer Gaia Bernabe-Belvis documents migration, identity, and intergenerational trauma of Filipinos living in Germany in her photobook: On Collective Longing
Words Yra Luis Gener Gutierrez
Photos Gaia Bernabe-Belvis
April 7, 2025
“I was just documenting everything,” Gaia Bernabe-Belvis tells Art+ Magazine.
The 23-year-old Filipino photography student at University of Europe for Applied Sciences began her fondness for preserving moments when she was seven. Using her old Sony digital camera, Gaia took photos of herself and of her family during their travels.
It was in 2014 when she started producing photography materials. The very first she can remember was a photo series she dedicated to her high school friends titled, “Kids.” Bernabe-Belvis had an epiphany: she always loved talking to people; she lets them tell their stories and connects with them.
“I always had the urge to document every person who I encounter because I always feel we don’t have much time left,” the photo studio and darkroom assistant shares, “I’m fascinated by the subtle moments in life, the nuances and the inbetweens, the stillness, the tenderness, the sensuality, movements, the small things,” she explains.
There’s a certainty that photographs skate in preservation of time. Images are materials for remembering, the very antithesis of forgetting. It’s a tool for sentimental people as it stores the intricate details of a moment, including emotions and feelings.
In her most recent work, On Collective Longing, she documents heavy feelings with much attention. With this, Bernabe-Belvis discusses the themes and her experiences in production.
The Photobook
Being a photography student, the idea for this photobook sparked in one of her classes. “On Collective Longing is the brainchild for my documentary photography final project last semester,” she tells Art+.
They were given three topics to explore and for Gaia she immediately had an idea she wanted to tackle: the lack of representation of Filipinos in Germany where she currently resides. “I soon began to read research articles and findings about [the] Filipino-German diaspora,” she notes. “My gut feeling told me I have to find my people, so I listened.”
She thinks that On Collective Longing is the first thing she has ever produced as a proper photography project. She admits that a lot of research and interviews were made for her to show the authenticity of her participants' emotions on camera.
It was right after photographing Filipinos when she realized all of them, including herself, had one thing in common which was “the desire to be respected as human beings and not [as] outsiders,” the very factor she took into account when deciding for the book's title.
“Every portrait session would end with a warm [and] long hug from these people [subjects] that felt very safe and familiar,” she confesses, “eventually, I knew ‘On Collective Longing’ would be a justifiable title for my photobook.”
She explores the themes of migration, identity and intergenerational trauma for this work. She has this belief that photography is a medium that makes everyone empaths which makes it the best way to capture the latter theme of On Collective Longing.
“With photography, it could capture forms and translate feelings that sometimes other mediums are not able to. Simply because photography is a representation of life,” Gaia notes, “Intergenerational trauma shows up in different forms, and photography is utilized to document these facets by photographing items, hands, people, and places.”
On Overseas Workers, Mothers, and Daughters
On Collective Longing chronicles Gaia’s four-month journey across Germany where she spoke to overseas workers who are mothers, grandmothers, and daughters. It wasn’t her intention to pursue this specifically, “Most of the Filipinos who reached out to me are under this demographic,” she says.
However, being a person who believes in superstitions, Gaia thinks that it is fate that brought these people to her.
It was perfect that her subjects fell into such categories, because beyond all this, she has a desire to do one more thing: “I wanted to understand my mother more, even though I’m thousands of miles away from her,” she says.
She believes the reason why she keeps taking photos was her mother’s tough love. It was “the pain, guilt, and fixation to understand why my mother had to live her life this way,” she specifies.
The Work Behind the Camera
When she started looking for people to be subjects for On Collective Longing, Gaia was surprised with the population of Filipinos living in Germany. By posting an open call on her Instagram account, tagging Gabriela and Alpas Pilipinas, she received at least 70 messages from Filipinos across the country.
After pre-production research, she started meeting her participants in person. For her, it was important to take their photographs at home, “I needed to understand if there’s still Filipino culture in their spaces,” Gaia says, “Unfortunately, most of them do not have that anymore except when it comes to kitchen, where I saw familiar things like a bottle of Mang Tomas or bagoong.”
Production was the most fun part because it was a combination of candid and staged photography. She then would follow through on the emotions of her subjects and improvise poses that depended on their responses.
After each session of photographing her subjects, Gaia has a technique of softly wrapping things up. “I would ask them to write a letter to a loved one about what they have been meaning to say,” she says, “I was surprised most letters were addressed to their grandparents.”
