MELBOURNE, Australia (MindaNews / 01 March) — Some people carry cameras. Some carry history.

Alex Baluyut carried both, and over the years he became something larger than the profession itself. A looming legend. Alex Baluyut left a lasting legacy in the realm of Philippine photography. The kind of man who walked into rooms quietly but somehow altered the gravity inside them.

I met Alex in 2004 during the ingress and setup of a photo exhibition of Mindanao images with Gene Boyd Lumawag. Boyd was my age, brilliant, restless, already becoming the photographer he would be remembered for. Alex was already legendary by then. His photographs had circulated across the world. He captured images from the Berlin riots. He captured the moment when the Berlin Wall fell. The wars and insurgencies in Mindanao. The lives of Indigenous peoples, whose stories rarely found their way into mainstream history, played a significant role. They were iconic images, the kind that become reference points for an entire generation of photographers.

But that afternoon, none of that mattered.

He was just another person sitting with us. Laughing. Drinking beer. Talking about life like anyone else.

I remember being star-struck, quietly trying not to show it. I had wanted to be a photojournalist all my life. No formal training. No one guiding me through institutions. The photographers at MindaNews served as my mentors, simply by granting me the opportunity to observe and learn. Watching. Learning. Absorbing.

I did not expect that later in life Alex Baluyut himself would become one of my mentors.

Boyd admired him deeply. Alex held Boyd in the same reverence that mentors hold for younger storytellers. He nominated Boyd to apply for the Young World Press Photo fellowship. Boyd got it. Europe opened for him.

A few months later Boyd was shot in the head in Sulu.

There are moments that split time into before and after. I was in Palawan on assignment when Alex called me late at night. His voice was calm in a careful way. He told me to sit down and stay calm before he said anything else.

Then he told me Boyd was gone.

I remember screaming into the phone. I remember crying so intensely that my body nearly collapsed from sheer grief. Alex heard all of it on the other end.

The next time I saw him was during Boyd’s wake and funeral. I remember the heat of the sun pressing down like a physical weight. I was wearing a white polo and a black skirt, sobbing as we walked. It felt like the longest funeral walk in history. 

Alex was one of the pallbearers carrying Boyd.

That night we got extremely drunk. Grief sometimes demands that.

A year later we saw each other again during Boyd’s memorial photo exhibition. I read an essay about Boyd’s life and photographs. I still remember Alex and Precious Baluyut telling me afterwards that I should become a photography reviewer because what I wrote was good. Coming from someone whose work had already become iconic in the profession and whose reputation was already legendary, those words stayed with me.

Life carried us in different directions after that. I left the Philippines to study in the United States. Years passed. Silence. Then one day the quiet miracle of the internet stitched our lives back together.

We became friends on Facebook.

I was living in China when I enrolled in his masterclass in documentary photography. One assignment required everyone to submit a photograph. Among all the submissions he chose mine. A black and white photo of a bra hanging on a closet doorknob.

I almost didn’t submit it because I didn’t see anything special in it. It felt too small. But Alex saw something.

We spoke for hours on video chat about storytelling and documentary photography. I told him I was embarrassed that I only used a 50mm lens. He laughed gently and told me something that has stayed with me ever since.

“It is not the camera.
It is the person using the camera.”

And then he said something even more important. In documentary photography a 50mm lens is powerful because it forces you to go near your subjects. To interact with them. To step inside the story instead of hiding behind distance.

That was Alex’s philosophy in a sentence.

Close to people. Close to life.

Because of his encouragement I later gained access to a Chinese training camp for Olympic divers and photographed them for a documentary series that ended up published in magazines. Yet the work he seemed to love most was something quieter. My photographs of Chinese paper cutting, a dying art form. He arranged an exhibition for my photographs at Conspiracy Garden Cafe. They were among the first images to hang there.

I remember feeling stunned.

One thing I loved about Alex was how deeply he supported women image-makers. He championed them openly. Encouraged them. Made space for them. Many times he would motion for me to sit beside him and we would talk for hours about photography, politics, ideas, and the strange theatre of human life.

His humor was unforgettable.

His stories were legendary.

The kind of stories that should fill entire books. And perhaps they will one day.

As a young man he walked into the office of the Associated Press and simply refused to accept rejection. He returned again and again until he was taken in as an apprentice and eventually a photographer. That stubborn will defined him.

He believed photojournalism could change the world.

He risked his life covering events others would not approach. Eventually he even left the stability of the Associated Press to document the insurgency in Mindanao because that was the story he felt compelled to tell. 

That decision produced one of the most important photobooks in Philippine history: “Kasama,” a project so fearless it won the National Book Award. It was the first time a photography book had ever received that recognition in the country. Later came Brotherhood, documenting police brutality. Another National Book Award.

Those works alone would have secured his place in history. But Alex was not interested in staying comfortable inside a reputation.

He kept moving.

Later in life our paths crossed again in Los Baños when I worked as a communications specialist for IRRI. When I arrived, Alex fetched me from the bus station himself and carried my bag. He helped me find a small boarding house I could afford.

Those gestures told you everything about him.

Evenings were spent with him, Precious, and their children. Drinking beer. Arguing about politics and the human condition. Precious singing kundiman as night gathered around us. Those evenings remain some of the happiest moments of my life. I felt like I belonged there among people who understood that life can be lived with dignity even without wealth, as long as you help others and share whatever joy you have.

Alex never became rich in money.

But he was wealthy in the things that matter.

Stories.

Experience.

Wisdom.

Compassion.

And food.

He was an excellent cook. I still remember the beef stew he used to make for me when I visited. It deserves a place in the mythology.

In later years his passion shifted toward something even more profound. Through ARMK (Art Relief Mobile Kithcen), the mobile kitchen he helped run, he fed people displaced by war and disasters. During the siege of Marawi many photographers rushed in to capture images.

Alex entered the war zone to feed people.

He carried an old point-and-shoot camera with him. He told me there were times he saw something powerful and wished he had taken the photograph. But feeding people had become more important. Even then he still managed to produce remarkable images from inside the war zone.

I visited him there one afternoon with Manuel while we were filming the aftermath of the war. Volunteers moved around giant cauldrons of soup. Smoke rising. 

Stories flowing from Alex like a living archive.

Then he said something that has stayed in my mind ever since.

“The little stories matter.”

That sentence explains his photography better than any critic could.

Yes he was iconic.

Yes he was legendary.

Yes he was larger than life.

But not because he chased spectacle.

His images stayed close to people. The quiet gesture. The human face carrying an entire story without needing explanation. Where photographers like Sebastião Salgado often build sweeping visual epics, Alex worked in a more intimate register. Grounded. Observant. Human.

He could capture an entire story in a face.

When our film A House in Pieces came out, he was one of the most enthusiastic supporters online. He often told people something that embarrassed me but also meant the world.

“Claire is a good photographer and writer. Sayang she didn’t follow that path. But film is probably good for her. She’s a born storyteller.”

Hearing that from him, a born storyteller, felt enormous.

The last time I saw Alex was again in the aftermath of Marawi. Instead of standing with the cluster of journalists chasing photographs, he was there feeding people.

Camera in his pocket.

Purpose in his hands.

That image remains the most iconic portrait of him in my memory.

The Philippines has lost a legend. A looming one. A difficult one. A generous one.

My heart is breaking writing this. My deepest condolences to Precious and his boys.

And Alex, if you can somehow hear this wherever stories go after the body is gone, know this: One day I will write a full journal article about your body of work. You deserve that. Very much so. Because you were larger than life.

And you will be missed immensely.

I am dedicating my new film to you. I wish you had lived longer to see it. Because I followed your advice. The little stories do matter!

(Jean Claire Dy posted this on her social media page on 28 February 2026. Permission to share granted to MindaNews. In another post, she offers this poem – Field Notes for Alex)

Field Notes for Alex

He carried a camera 
like a small window
through smoke.

Cities broke open in front of him. 
Glass.
Sirens.
Men shouting the language of war. 

Still he noticed 
a woman brushing dust 
from a child’s hair. 

Most people who walk through fire
come out as stone. 

He came out carrying soup
in a dented pot.

Somewhere in his pocket
a camera still slept,
warm with fingerprints,

waiting
for the next small story 
that refused to die.