A chrome-and-blue jeepney riding down a quiet Manila street in the morning
Nº 06Travel PhotographyManila

This Is
Manila

A city that moves, and the story it carries.

A travel and documentary photography series from Manila — a city everyone calls chaos, photographed as something else.

This is Manila. It’s chaos.

At least, that’s what I kept hearing. From people who had been, from people who hadn’t, from people who were repeating something they’d read.

Chaos implies dysfunction. That’s too simple for this city.

A loaded tricycle passing under a stone bridge as a jeepney rolls by, Manila
A jeepney coming down a jeepney-lined street beneath a tangle of overhead wires, Manila

Because this city moves. It breathes. Each cog turning the next.

A white dog perched on the back of a jeepney below 'Delta Lighting' shop signs, Manila
A man asleep on the sidecar of his parked pedicab in the street, Manila
Two women at a sidewalk stall of religious calendars, one seated in a wheelchair, Manila
A flower-wreath cart beside a Generika drugstore, an LRT viaduct behind, Manila
A tricycle and children on a wire-strung street, workers on scaffolding above, Manila
Customers at a palabok stall in Quiapo, takeaway bags hanging overhead, Manila
A man in a Superman shirt resting on a plastic bench against an old tiled facade, Manila
Men pulling a flower-draped religious procession cart under the LRT tracks, Manila
A porter pushing a hand truck stacked with boxes across the street, an ambulance behind, Manila
Two men playing chess on a curb while another looks on, Manila
The gears01 / 10Scroll to advance

Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of friction. Dead-stop traffic. Clashing infrastructure. Hidden extreme poverty. Political corruption. But the gears are still moving.

A man napping in the cab of a parked delivery truck, an arm resting on the window, Manila
A man in a red striped jersey astride a motorbike, holding a bundle, Manila
A crowded Binondo street with a 'Meisum' teahouse sign, a porter carrying a sack through traffic, Manila Chinatown

This city carries its story, and what you’re seeing is the result of repeated interruption. Constant adaptation. Improvisation for survival, and for progress. This is what happens when control is never yours.

When you’re pulled into a world war. When your people are massacred. And when the powers that misshaped you don’t stay. They move on. And you’re left to function anyway.

That means learning how to move forward despite the damage. Not cleanly. Not easily. But persistently.

A toddler asleep in a sling on a caregiver's back at a Manila market

You might not think of it this way now, but Manila was once, essentially, the center of the world.

Long before Spain arrived, this city connected Asia to the Islamic world. The Spaniards then rewired it into the Western world through the Manila Galleon, the first truly global trade route, running from Manila to Mexico. Money moved through the city. So did knowledge. But it wasn’t distributed evenly, and it still isn’t.

When the Spanish empire declined, control shifted. Independence was denied, and American rule followed. It was framed as benevolent tutoring. The city gained institutions, but what it gained was a pretense of control. Each interference promised order. Each rebuilt the city in its image. And then, again, war destroyed the city.

So what do you do?

A vendor reading at his sidewalk stall under a black umbrella among shuttered shops, Manila
A battered coin-op karaoke jukebox plastered with licence plates on a grimy wall, Manila
A woman in a red Black Nazarene devotee's headband at a market, dried goods behind, Manila
A woman by a roadside stall in front of a rusted shutter, baskets at her feet, Manila
A vendor arranging green-and-yellow mangoes heaped on a cart, Manila
A boy and a man in a crowded market street, shoppers pressing past, Manila
A narrow market alley beneath a 'Merriam Webster Bookstore' sign, shoppers under umbrellas, Manila
An older woman carrying a plastic crate on her hip past a yellow column, Manila
A man beside his parked tricycle at a Binondo corner, Chinese signage and a fruit stall behind, Manila
A portrait of an older woman with a towel over her head holding a cup in a busy Chinatown street, Manila

You work with what you have. You fix what you can, where you can. Development followed the path of least resistance, and what falls outside that flow is told to wait.

But Filipinos don’t just wait. They adapt. They persist. Everywhere you look, you’ll see people finding ways through.

It’s easy to call Manila chaos. That misses the point.

This city is still being built. And its people are writing what comes next.

This Is ManilaJacob Sigala