Photographer Angelica Dass captures the ‘faces of becoming’ with TECNO CAMON Slim 5G
for TECNO
CEBU, Philippines — A portrait captures a moment in someone’s life, but there is always more than what the image reveals.
Internationally acclaimed photographer Angélica Dass explores that idea with TECNO's CAMON Slim 5G through “100 Portraits of Becoming,” a global portrait program that invites us to look beyond what simply meets the eye.
That is the difference between being looked at and being seen. For “100 Portraits of Becoming,” Dass isn’t just taking pictures. She’s more interested in how her subjects want to be seen.
Her journey with TECNO spans five countries: Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil and the Philippines, capturing 100 portraits that reflect humanity in all its complexity and the many ways people are constantly becoming.
In the Philippines, Dass’ lens focused on single working mothers and the people that support them.
TECNO Philippines specifically wanted to collaborate with single working mothers for their CAMON Slim 5G launch because they embody what “Make it Lighter,” their campaign key message, is all about. Everyday, they juggle work, motherhood, and everything in between, often relying on pure diskarte, or the unique Filipino value of finding your way forward no matter the circumstances.
But this is not about glorifying how much women can endure just to find their way forward. Instead, it is all about recognizing the many aspects of their lives: their ambitions, personalities and choices, and how technology can help make life lighter for them.
Each woman in Dass’ portraits brings a story of their own. Together, they reveal different ways of understanding motherhood, from finding strength in community to making room for personal ambitions and carrying lessons across generations.
It takes a village
For Twinkle Dimayuga, a community builder and one of the women Dass photographed, being a solo mom doesn’t mean you’re alone. After all, life is much lighter when the burden is shared.
When her marriage ended after 15 years, she had to continue raising her two children. What got her through wasn’t pretending she could handle everything herself, but acknowledging that she needed help.
“Calling someone ‘strong’ can sound like praise while quietly accepting how much she is expected to endure, and Dimayuga’s way forward meant admitting she needed other people,” Dass said.
Thus, Dimayuga helped build MAMA, a community that supports solo mothers through parenting and grief support, self-care and legal guidance.
Just like how a portrait cannot fully capture a person’s whole story, the term “single mother” is not enough to define them.
Ely Haig, another woman in Dass’ portrait series, is a solo mother, breadwinner and competitive padel player all at once. Motherhood did not completely define who she was, but became another part of who she already was.
The art of diskarte
There’s a reason why diskarte has no direct English translation. Deeply rooted in Filipino culture, the word describes the resourcefulness of finding a way forward, particularly when the obvious path is unavailable.
Filipino single mothers are one of the experts in this field.
For fourth-year nursing student Eunice Angeles, that kind of diskarte shaped the person she is becoming.
Raised by a single mother who is an OFW in Qatar, Angeles remembers her mother not as someone distant, but as someone who always found a way. When they did not have access to a computer, her mother found one. Despite struggling with English, she applied for work. And when providing for her family required going abroad, she took that difficult step, too.
Dass may not be Filipino, but through the photoshoot and stories of women like Angeles, she learned the deeper meaning behind diskarte.
“What interested me in diskarte was the action inside it: how someone finds a way,” Dass said. “Eunice learned from watching her mother repeatedly find solutions, and then developed that same agency herself.”
The process of becoming across generations
Coming from a family where both her grandmother and mother raised their children on their own, Jessica Rose “Nanay Jecka” Tini refuses the idea that being raised by generations of single moms is considered a cycle of failure and fate.
When her mother made the difficult decision to move abroad to provide for her, Tini’s grandmother stepped up. Rather than repeating a fixed story, each generation learned to adapt to what their family needed. This is proof that it’s not a cycle, but a process of becoming, of growing into new roles, making different choices, and finding ways forward.
That idea of becoming extends beyond motherhood. The women in Dass’ portraits are not defined solely by the circumstances they have had to navigate, but by the lives they continue to build alongside them.
As part of a larger archive, the portraits from the Philippines show that there is no single definition of a woman.
“On self-definition, I hope the chapter shows that a solo mother can also be a professional, an athlete, a daughter, a friend, a student, a creator or a community builder. What matters is not only what she has survived, but what she is choosing, changing and becoming,” Dass concluded.
Want to see the portraits yourselves? Learn more about the 100 Portraits of Becoming through TECNO’s website and check out their Facebook page for more updates.
Editor’s Note: This press release from TECNO is published by the Advertising Content Team that is independent from our Editorial Newsroom.
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