The Go-getters: Everywhere We Shoot

PHILIPPINES, APRIL 2011 – Their art speaks playfulness, irony and their own brand of humor. They are called Everywhere We Shoot and they live up to that name. For last month’s Ayala Museum DesignTalks, the lecture series that brings prominent and pioneering Filipino creative professionals on center stage, the creative duo behind Everywhere We Shoot! introduced their work and presented their first solo exhibit.

The tandem, composed of Ryan Vergara and Garovs Garrovillo, met in college at the De La Salle – College of St. Benilde’s School of Design and Arts, where Ryan was a Multimedia Arts Major while Garovs was in Fashion Design and Merchandising. The two would hang out and talk about their interests. Inspired by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat,and Terry Richardson, and Dutch fashion photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Ryan and Garov pursued photography, initially with a camera from Ryan’s grandmother.. 

Ryan and Garovs collaborated for each other’s portfolios, in which they experimented in avant-garde photography. 
In one photo shoot with actress Meryll Soriano, a good friend of theirs, they depicting her as a taong grasa (homeless people blackened by soot). The photo was so stunning that it got published and became as stepping stone to more projects. 

They wrote “Ewwwsss…kadiri”(Ewwwsss…yuck) on their business cards, which they left around the Fully Booked bookstore and received e-mail messages from art directors as a result.

Ryan and Garovs wrote a wish list of their goals such as to see their works being published, to collaborate with personalities, work on projects related to music, to visit Japan and to exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art.

Everywhere We Shoot’s work has been published in the newspapers and magazines such as the Philippine Star and Pulp Magazine. They have shot every album cover of Up Dharma Down. A photo they took of the group was published in Time Magazine. Everywhere We Shoot! worked together with The T-Shirt Project and designed the Today is T-shirt Day album cover.

One of the duo’s remarkable collaborations is with Mich Dulce, a Filipino designer and vocalist. The work involved thousands of postcards featuring Dulce’s designs and creations being sent to other countriesfor the We Are Third World project. Team Manila, Inksurge, Proudrace, Puma, Heima Home and Lifestyle and 120° Of Light Charity are other teams Everywhere We Shoot has worked with.

They may not have gone to Japan yet, but Ryan and Garovs came pretty close by designing an album for Japanese singer Swissy. The creative duo got a chance to work on their dream project – with Polaroid, featuring the brand’s PoGo 2 digital camera with instant printer. In addition, their photo of Stefan Sagmeister landed on the cover of adobo magazine in 2009.

Exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art may still be a dream at the moment, but a talk and an exhibit at the Ayala Museum is not a bad start at all for the pair. There is no doubt that we will continue to see their work–and them working–everywhere.