Philippine visual artist Jed Escueta learned photography by doing—he started taking photos as an art student in 1999—and has since then habitually wielded the camera as an extended way of seeing and experiencing the world.

Exhibiting his photo-based art since 2002, Escueta captures circumstances that would have otherwise been archived in memory and lost to time: seemingly spontaneous images which document transitions, flux, and momentary spells of danger.

Escueta's photographic practice and process is based on intuition, a visual diary of the everyday spectacles he partakes in. Far from engaging in studio photography, he refrains from executing any overtly controlled or tightly-orchestrated scenes: there are almost no cosmetic interventions to rearrange the elements in his environment, no models of the ideal.

Instead, Escueta focuses on capturing images from chance and circumstance, defining ephemeral moments and objects in transition.  He seeks out the story, the moment that seems to tell it all, as it unfolds before his eyes. The images remain atmospheric, raw: letting the narrative speak for itself.

The subjects of Escueta's works revolve around the personal: his insider accounts of forays into floating and fleeting worlds, and the artifacts from these journeys.

A substantial chunk of his earlier images chronicle his days with fellow artists and friends into the bacchanal and the psychedelic, as seen in his solo exhibitions Vice Begins (2006) and Trace-A-Stasis (2005). His three-part exhibition of works as a resident artist at Green Papaya (2009) revealed many other different facets of Escueta's interests: as a laidback observer of the underground music scene chronicling ska band Coffeebreak Island, as a jujitsu practitioner, as a patient observer of everyday tragedies and occurences, for instance.

Some of Escueta's images also focus on singular objects and matter, often memorably in a state of flux: lightning illuminating ominously dim skies and the alien patterns of smoke rings. Escueta occassionally incorporates self-portraits into his work, sharing shards of self as a spectator to all these occurences. 

His recent participation in residencies granted by local independent art spaces Big Sky Mind and Green Papaya also contributed to his developing style of photography-based installation works. Escueta incorporates his sensibilities as a painter in his photographs: both in the ways he chooses to capture the images—intentionally raw and bordering on painterly in sensibility—and in his means of assembling and exhibiting them.