Have we lost our mornings—or our experience of mornings—because of the certainty we ascribe to them?

“As surely as the sun rises”.

Now more than ever, being in demand and always on the go has become a kind of status symbol. My works are an invitation for the viewer to take a moment to be still and hopefully, from this silence, there might grow a sense of presence that allows for other presences, of people and surroundings that we hardly spare a glance at as we rush through the day.

I’m a morning person and these are my daily and occasional encounters. I captured sun-drenched scenes of people and their colored shadows—portraits of the morning, if you will. I am both a witness and a participant in those moments: the breaking of dawn and the cool air fading as the sun’s warmth radiates; the ringing of a school bell interrupted by the dark timbre of the church bell, the sound of a honking car overtaken by the sudden whistling from a neighbor’s kettle; the aroma of coffee and fried rice mingling with the smell of “siga” from meticulously gathered fallen leaves set aflame.

And yet sometimes there come circumstances beyond our control that will make our experience of the morning light so much different from what we have always experienced.

The morning surely comes but also always it is fleeting.

– Adeo Sta. Juana, artist