Dried Fish Matters (DFM) PhD candidate at the University of Manitoba Jessie Jr. Varquez has won the photography contest organized as part of the ninth Global Conference on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF9), hosted at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Pathum Thani, Thailand.
Jessie’s winning photograph (below) was captured during the early stages of his fieldwork on Bantayan Island in the central Philippines, as he traversed the island to understand the broader contours of its dried fish economy. His image, bathed in the heat and light that define artisanal drying yards, offers a portrayal of gendered labour, environmental vulnerability, and the unseen dimensions of women’s work in small-scale fisheries.
Photo Title: Arranging slipmouths on a drying rack in Bantayan Island, the Philippines. The exposure to extreme heat poses difficulty to women working in the post-harvest fisheries.
“The photograph I submitted foregrounded elements of women’s important contributions, yet they remain invisible. I deliberately chose an image that concealed their faces, evoking their ‘shadowed’ contributions. I also wanted to imply that there are ‘greater forces’ at work in the image – in this photograph about climate change – that is significantly shaping women’s plight.” — Jessie Jr. Varquez
Jessie’s doctoral research explores human–rabbitfish relations by examining the entanglements of knowledge, values, and power that shape the social economy of dried fish in the Philippines. His primary ethnographic focus is on the production of boneless danggit (dried rabbitfish), a delicacy produced in Bantayan Island.
As in many parts of the Philippines and across the Global South, dried fish production in Bantayan operates largely at the household level, sustained by artisanal fisheries and women’s unpaid or underrecognized labour. Dependent on solar energy for drying, this labour is increasingly exposed to the intensifying heat of climate change, revealing the deep intersections between gender, ecology, and precarity.
This recognition resonates with DFM’s ongoing work under Working Group 1 – Gender and Social Economy, which seeks to highlight how women’s contributions and agency shape the dried fish value chain while remaining obscured by broader systems of inequality. Jessie’s visual storytelling aligns closely with DFM’s commitment to documenting the lived experiences, vulnerabilities, and strengths of women in small-scale fisheries bringing to light the human stories that lie at the heart of global fish economies.
The list of submitted entries for the GAF9 photography contest is available here.