remembering Melchor Ong

MELCHOR ONG

It was a Tuesday when I first met him. He came through the behest of my photographic mentor, Emil Davocol, to clean and recondition my second camera, a Rollei Twin Lens Reflex manufactured in the decade of my birth. He sat, in his white sports shirt, across from me, as he put on his large eyeglasses. Without saying a word, he took the Rollei with his right hand, and examined it up close. He turned it round and round, as if trying to figure out how to get the camera open. For the better part of the next two minutes, I stared at him pondering whether I should tell him how to get it done, or just wait until he figures it out on his own. After another thirty seconds, the suspense was getting to be unbearable for me. Is this the man so many people have vouched to be the best repair man in Asia? I was seriously beginning to have my doubts. By this time he was looking at the cover of the Franke & Heideck ground glass focusing screen. Not being able to contain myself anymore, I said, in the vernacular, “this is where you pull, to get it open” and proceeded to point out the focusing screen cover. I felt I had done him a service. I had owned that Rollei for over half a decade already and I knew how to get it open. Or at least I thought I did. Feeling as if a great insult was hurled upon him by this impertinent owner of a Rollei, Melchor glared at me as he brought the camera behind his head, and proceeded to dismantle it without even looking! Certainly not the best start to have with the man considered by many as the only remaining technical expert of Rollei, as well as the other top marquee brands Leica and Hasselblad. Humbled (and perhaps, shamed) by the turn of events, I forged a friendship with the man that has lasted a decade already.

In the days when Escolta, Avenida, and Rizal avenue was the heart of the city, Leica already had a significant presence in the Philippines, with a distribution chain as well as a service facility in the area. Melchor was the young (handsome, he claims) upstart blessed with a phenomenal understanding of optics and mechanical engineering. Aside from simply learning the process behind how a camera works and fails, he modified and eventually developed a better, less invasive repair and rehab approach.

Some of his rehab exploits I have seen for myself. On one sunny Sunday afternoon, he was working on a forty year old Hasselblad that had just received a death certificate from the official Hasselblad service center either in Hong Kong or Singapore. Parts for that specific model had already been discontinued and there was no way for it to be resuscitated anymore, according to the ‘Blad’ people; thus it made its way towards Melchor, the life-giving wizard. Taking it apart, he found the cause to be a broken gear, which was in the middle of the mechanical turning system. If he could get another gear as a replacement, the whole thing would come back to life. So, over the next three days, using proprietary tools made by himself, he fashioned a replacement gear out of a demonetized 10 centavo philippine coin and brought back the Hasselblad to life. Necessity really has been the moving reason behind invention. His exploits are in fact, legendary, according to the owners of the priceless cameras he has revived or resuscitated; the latter seems to be more apppropriate in the context of collectors and their significant mechanical other.

Now, having such talent in a single person will also spawn a certain degree of arrogance, as the owners of those priceless cameras who have found themselves fallen from his favor, know only too well. But such is the impertinence of genius.

Early in January, I paid him a visit, bringing three lenses, and a choice of five hand rolled cigars from Holland, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines, for us to smoke while cleaning the optical glass of the lenses. He had been a cigarette smoker for about four decades already, and I wanted him to try cigars, which you didn’t have to inhale, just puff. He took the cigar, to keep as a souvenir. As he had just come out of another stroke six months prior, it became obvious that he wasn’t also in shape to clean the lenses I brought, and so we settled on our usual three-hour storytelling session. He brought out a wood laminated photograph of him, in his twenties, at the Leica headquarters, wearing a jacket emblazoned with a patch of the 100mph club. It was his riding jacket, he tells me, as he was recently inducted into the bike club. “To get in, you have to drive to a speed of 100 miles per hour, with a member backriding, just to look at your speedometer”. “And you had to hold your speed for a certain number of minutes!” says Melchor, as his face seemingly shows him reliving the moment. At this point, I whip up my cellphone camera, a decent 1.3megapixel fixed focus Motorola Razor V3i, and shoot an image. Not really knowing why, I simply knew that I had to preserve the moment. That was my role. Digressing for a moment, I feel compelled to answer the question popping in your head right now. Why didn’t I, a professional photographer, have a professional camera with me at that time, but I had three lenses? Well, it is because professional photographers like me do not carry cameras anymore unless we are on assignment. We leave that to the amateurs, who carry cameras everywhere. And besides, the Motorola Razor, in the hands of a pro, is more than sufficient. I had just actually finished a series for an exhibit with it, titled “Malaysia on my Motorola”, but that is another story altogether. Now back to our 100mph story. Taking a closer look at the photo, I notice he really was handsome in his youth! He says he actually was in the movies for a time, playing the young chinese mestizo roles, but that he was more intrigued with cinematography, than acting in front of the camera. Besides, he had just met the woman whom we would eventually marry and spend the rest of his life with. And she was also a looker!

After finishing my cigar, a half-corona Tabaqueria red label made from Isabela Burley Tobacco leaf, and after I began packing my three lenses into the camera bag, I asked if he would finally lend me his proprietary tools so I can do the cleaning myself. In the decade or so since our first meeting, all I have ever done was watch him do it himself; and I was quite familiar with the process already. But since I was never allowed to touch anything, much less borrow a tool, I pretty much knew the answer. But he stood up, walked with the gait of a person in rehab, and came back with four newly crafted opening tools. With a wide smile, the only thing he asked was when I was coming back. “Before Valentine’s”, I replied, as I hurriedly packed the tools, in case he would change his mind. He waved us off, as Ron Taccad and I drove away.

It would be two and a half months before I paid him a visit again; but this time without the lenses. All I brought with me was his new 8x10 portrait, holding up his 100mph club photograph. His youngest son came up to me and said that his “dad was sick, but was recovering”. For a week after my January visit, he would constantly wait for the days to pass until Valentine’s day, which was three weeks away then. Sometime thereabouts, he fell ill, with a three-pronged attack of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Dementia. I was brought to his room, where he was a shadow of his former self. On seeing me and the portrait I brought, his eyes brightened as he struggled to sit up. Knowing how physically tiring it was for him, and how emotionally difficult it was for me, I decided to leave barely two minutes after. “He is responding quite well to medication and therapy” said his wife. “Strong-willed persons usually do so” I replied. I added, “It’s a good thing that I took his photo then”, as I walked towards the door to leave, intending to return when I sense he has physically gotten better. I hope it does not take too long.

Finally it dawned on me. Photography, with its ability to freeze the priceless moment, should freeze the priceless moment. And this is the moment that I have frozen.

Jesus Paul C. Yan

For The Paul Yan Chronicles, 2007