The Bookseller Who Photographed a Revolution
Updated: 11 hours ago
Manuel Arias y Rodríguez, his camera, and the war that made us
The price explosion for historical photographs is everywhere, and last September 12, it reached a particular photograph.
At León Gallery's Magnificent September Auction, a single print of José Rizal's execution sold for ₱841,120. It opened at ₱100,000 and closed at ₱ 841,120, setting a record for a Philippine photograph.
If you've seen the image, you know it doesn't look like much at first. A wide field. A few lampposts. A tramline cutting across the foreground. A square of soldiers in the middle distance. You have to look twice to find the man at the center of it all.
It is Bagumbayan on the morning of December 30, 1896, and that man is José Rizal.
I first came across this image many years ago in a story about a remarkable find. Someone browsing a Philadelphia flea market picked up a print for a little over a dollar. He later donated it to the Berenguer Museum in Cavite, where it has sat for more than a decade as a favorite among visitors. I visited the museum many years ago and was astounded by the image. I remember standing in front of it far longer than I had planned.
Little did I know that years later I would meet that individual, Mr. John Silva, and, in fact, recently work with him on a special project at the Ortigas Library, where he is now a director.
But every photograph has a maker. People commonly attribute this one to a Manila bookseller named Manuel Arias y Rodríguez, and the deeper we dug into his life, the bigger he seemed to grow.
So who was he? First and foremost, a bookseller, a wealthy one, too.
From the mid-1880s, Manuel and his brother Vicente ran Agencia Editorial, a bookshop on the Escolta that also sold photographs of city and landscape views. The shop later moved to Carriedo Street in Binondo, and by then the records name Vicente as the proprietor.
Genealogist Mona Magno-Veluz adds more to the picture in a short film for her Mighty Magulang series. She describes Arias as a wealthy Spanish peninsular born in Spain and says Manuel set up a photography studio right there on Escolta, under the same roof as the books. Think about that for a second. The brothers sold books; they sold views, and they made them too. Vicente minded the trade. Manuel, increasingly, minded the camera.
Even his birthplace is still debated. Wikidata says Spain, 1850. Collector-historian Jonathan Best calls him "a Spaniard born in Manila in the 1860s." We haven't settled it yet.
What we can say is this: no record shows him working as a photographer in Spain. As far as anyone has traced it, his life behind the camera begins here, in Manila. Blas Sierra de la Calle of the Museo Oriental in Valladolid believes he learned the craft from Francisco Pertierra, and that from about 1892 he was photographing his own travels: Cavite and the shores of Laguna de Bay. Remember those places. A few years later, he would cross that same ground again, this time with an army.
One detail from Nigel Gooding's history of Manila business firms keeps coming back to me. He writes that Arias was "sympathetic to the revolutionary ferment" and sold Rizal's two novels "on the sly."
Veluz tells it the same way. At the Agencia, if you knew whom to ask, you could quietly walk out with a copy of the Noli or the Fili. Books the friars wanted burned slipped across a Spanish counter on Manila's busiest street.
Hold that thought. It explains a lot of what comes next.
When the Katipunan rose in August 1896, Arias was already out with his camera. He photographed the Spanish reinforcements pouring into Manila, then followed the army as it shelled the rebel towns. Gooding calls this series the most important body of images of that conflict. Some of it ran in Manila's El Comercio.
Then came the morning of the execution.
Today, the Fort Santiago shrine displays an enlargement, "the only known photograph," of Rizal's death, and a print sits in the Army Museum in Madrid. Most writers credit Arias. The careful ones say "commonly attributed," and we do, too.
Historian Vicente Rafael reads the picture as theatre. Native soldiers stand in front, doing the shooting. Behind them, a Spanish contingent waits, rifles ready in case the Filipinos refuse. Friars watch from a distance. Spain staged the killing of a Filipino by Filipinos, and someone stood on the Paseo and recorded the staging.
Veluz reads the frame just as closely. Rizal is still standing, arms bound, Filipino and Spanish soldiers around him. This isn't the aftermath. These are the last seconds.
11 January 1897: the Thirteen Martyrs
Twelve days later, Arias went back to Bagumbayan.
This time, it was for the Thirteen Martyrs of Bagumbayan. Veluz credits him with two photographs: one taken before the volleys and one after, both of which went up for auction at the Leon Gallery Magnificent September Auction 2026, along with the earlier-mentioned "Execution" photograph.
The first is hard to look at. The condemned stand in a line, all dressed in white. Some stand straight. Others are sagging, held up by friars and soldiers just to stay on their feet. Behind them are the Filipino Guardia Civil, the men who will do the shooting, and behind them, a Spanish detail, ready to fire on the Filipino guards if they refuse.
It is the same staging we saw at Rizal's death. Filipinos made to kill Filipinos, with a Spanish rifle at their backs.
And just like in the Rizal photograph, there's a stray dog in the frame, sniffing around. Veluz calls it a “doggy na usisero.” Even at the most solemn moments of our history, there is always an “usisero.”
The second photograph is almost the same. Except now, the men are lying on the ground.
Interestingly, two photographs of the Thirteen Martyrs also turned up in the album Salcedo Auctions sold last June. We don't yet know whether those prints are his.
February 1897: with Lachambre into Cavite
To understand where Arias went next, we need to talk about Cavite.
By early 1897, Cavite was the only province where the revolution achieved its greatest initial success under the Magdalo and Magdiwang factions. The victories at Binakayan and Dalahicán in November 1896 had kept it in Filipino hands, and the revolutionaries had dug in from the Bacoor shore through Zapote and Silang. One Spanish officer described the whole province as "one great entrenched camp."
So Governor-General Camilo de Polavieja didn't attack that line head-on. Instead, he sent General José de Lachambre around the back. Lachambre's brigades gathered at Calamba, marched through Santo Domingo, forded the Munting-Ilog and Malaquing-Ilog rivers, and took Silang on 19 February 1897.
And Arias went with them.
Sierra de la Calle writes that in 1897 he "acompañó como fotógrafo a la División Lachambre": he went along with the Division as a photographer. But the strongest evidence is in the pictures themselves. La Ilustración Artística, a weekly in Barcelona, printed his photographs from Calamba, Santo Domingo, both rivers, and Silang, up to 25 February 1897. Stage by stage, just days behind the column. He wasn't watching from the comfort of Manila.
One small correction, because it gets repeated a lot online: no source we found calls him the Division's official photographer. He was a private bookseller and press correspondent, embedded with the troops. Not a soldier, and as far as anyone has shown, not on anyone's payroll.
So why does this campaign matter so much? Because of everything it set in motion. While Lachambre closed in on Imus, the revolutionaries met at Tejeros on 22 March and elected Emilio Aguinaldo president in absentia because he was holding the front. Bonifacio walked out. Imus fell three days later, and on 10 May, Andrés and Procopio Bonifacio were executed in the hills of Maragondon.
In about ten weeks, the offensive retook Cavite. But it did much more. It handed the revolution to Aguinaldo, cost the revolution its founder, and pushed the fight north to Bulacan. Arias photographed the opening act from the Spanish side, and his images are among the few made at the time. One plate from March 1897 shows a hospital in the Dalahicán camp facing Noveleta, showing he was still inside the lines in the middle of the campaign.
There's one more mystery here. The official Spanish history of the campaign, Monteverde's Campaña de Filipinas: La División Lachambre (1898), includes 41 halftone plates and credits no photographer. Are some of them by Arias? Possibly. It's unproven, and it's in the book we currently have in our collection.
After losing Cavite, Aguinaldo moved north and set up his republic at Biak-na-Bato. Spain couldn't finish the war without more troops, and Madrid wouldn't send them. So it negotiated instead.
Once again, Arias followed. He went up the mountain with the negotiators, documented the proceedings that ended the fighting and sent Aguinaldo into exile, and included a portrait of the general in uniform. The pact was signed on 14 and 15 December 1897. On the 27th, Aguinaldo sailed from Dagupan for Hong Kong.
15 September 1898: the Congress opens
Less than a year later, Aguinaldo was back, and the revolution came back with him. On 15 September 1898, the Revolutionary Congress opened in Malolos, and yes, Arias was there again.
Veluz describes the photograph beautifully: Aguinaldo arrives in an open carriage drawn by four white horses, with ceremonial troops all around him and townspeople leaning out of their windows along the street. Four months later, Arias would stand in the same plaza to proclaim the Republic.
Which brings us to his work for Barcelona.
Arias supplied La Ilustración Artística, a Barcelona illustrated weekly, from 1897 to about 1900. In the issues we've examined so far (nos. 907, 924, 926, and 931, all from 1899), 35 plates carry his credit: "de fotografía (propiedad) de M. Arias y Rodríguez."
The magazine clearly favored him. It calls him "nuestro querido amigo y activo e inteligente corresponsal en Manila." Our dear friend and active, intelligent correspondent in Manila.
Veluz adds that his photographs later appeared in a book she gives as Guerra Filipina. A collector's blog uses a similar title for a run of Arias images. We haven't handled a copy ourselves, so for now, let's treat that title as unconfirmed.
What he sent to Barcelona is, honestly, extraordinary. Let's go through it, stop by stop.
Malolos, 23 January 1899
At 8:30 in the morning, the Congress met in Barasoain church to promulgate the Constitution and proclaim the Republic. Arias was standing in the plaza.
Proclamation of the Philippine Republic, Malolos, 23 January 1899. Top: Aguinaldo and the Congress commission walk to Barasoain Church. Bottom: Aguinaldo, newly sworn in, reviews the parade. La Ilustración Artística No. 907, "de fotografía de M. Arias y Rodríguez.
One plate shows Aguinaldo and the Congress commission walking to the church behind the national flag, troops presenting arms, and crowds in hats pressing in from every side. The other shows Aguinaldo, newly sworn in, reviewing the parade. In his written account, Arias says Aguinaldo took his oath, spoke in Tagalog, and reviewed about 4,000 troops. Imagine that. A Spanish correspondent, writing for a Spanish magazine, recorded the birth of the first Philippine Republic.
The insignia of the Filipino army
Arias also photographed real badges of the Filipino army "del natural," at actual size: cap triangles, stars, corps badges and the tricolor cockade. He also photographed a hand-colored rank chart with chevrons and starred shoulder straps, but where did he get it? In his own words, "la Secretaría de Guerra me facilitó." The Revolutionary War Department lent it to him.
Left: badges of the Filipino Army, photographed at actual size. Right: rank insignia of generals, chiefs and officers, from a chart lent by the "revolutionary Secretaría de Guerra." La Ilustración Artística No. 926, 1899.
That's connection and access. The bookseller who once sold Rizal on the sly clearly had friends on the other side.
Zamboanga, May 1899
With special permission, he sailed south with General Diego de los Ríos on the liner Puerto Rico and landed in Zamboanga on the 19th. There he photographed the trenches and rear-guard posts, the fire that destroyed the Barrio Viejo, troops loading onto ships, bronze cannons left behind for lack of time, and islanders loyal to Spain crowding the pier, hoping to be taken to Manila. The evacuation ended at 1 p.m. on the 24th, in heavy rain, "without a shot fired."
Evacuation of Zamboanga, May 1899. Top: the fire in Barrio Viejo, opposite the main plaza. Bottom: the pier crowded with islanders hoping to leave with the Spanish. La Ilustración Artística no. 926
Basilan
While the ships took on coal at Isabela, Arias slipped away on a side trip. He came back with Moro stilt houses, vintas, gongs, and kulintang, and the vintas that brought the Raja Muda of Jolo to pressure datto Pedro Cuevas, who refused him.
Isabela de Basilan, May 1899. Left: houses of Moro rancheria, built on piles over the water. Right: musical instruments in use in the rancherias: agung gongs, drums, and a kulintang. La Ilustración Artística no. 931
Baler
And then there's Baler. This is the one that gives me chills.
Arias transferred to the steamer Uranus with Lieutenant Colonel Cristóbal Aguilar, whom Ríos had sent to order the Spanish detachment besieged in Baler church to come out. But the commander inside, Lieutenant Martín, refused. He wouldn't let Arias photograph the church, and he threatened to open fire if the camera was even set up.
So what did Arias do? He turned around and photographed the Filipino lines instead.
Baler, May-June 1899. Top: Filipino soldiers who served as guides and escorts to Lt. Col. Aguilar and "nuestro corresponsal Sr. Arias y Rodriguez." Bottom: Lt. Col. Texon's (Simon Tecson) house with part of his force. La Ilustración Artística no. 924.
He photographed the escorts on the beach, a flying patrol, an archer, and the abandoned town, its streets once "clean and sanded," now overgrown with bush. He photographed Lieutenant Colonel Texón's house, Simón Tecson, with about twenty armed men and a cannon out front. According to the magazine, Aguilar and "el Sr. Arias" were to stay behind as hostages to guarantee the agreement with Tecson.
A bookseller, held as surety in the last act of Spain's war in Luzon. The siege finally ended on 2 June 1899.
The postcards
Then the war ended, the Americans arrived, and with them came the picture-postcard craze.
Around 1900, Manuel and Vicente issued a small series of cards from their own photographs. Jonathan Best calls the series "about a dozen different images," and many of the photographs date to before 1898.
This is where my own story with Arias really begins. Through these postcards, I learned more about him and his photographic style. As more senior postcard and deltiological collectors told me these postcards are very hard to find, I made it my personal mission to buy whatever postcard I could find of Mr. Arias. So far, so good. Our little group is up to nine titles:
From left to right: Matadero Municipal (Manila), Pescadores de Tondo (Manila), Palacio de Malacañang (Manila) (Filipinas), Columna de Magallanes (Manila), El Puente de España (Manila), Iglesia de Binondo (Manila), Río Pasig (Manila), Negritos del Norte de Luzon (Filipinas), Playa de Calamba y el Maquiling (Laguna). From Our Collection
How to spot one: the front
So how do you know if you're holding an Arias? Look for four marks. Find the first three together, and you're very likely in luck.
Identification details. Top left: the "COL. ARIAS" imprint. Top Right: the white script "MA" monogram in the image corner. Bottom: the faint "ES PROPRIEDAD DE M. ARIAS RODRIGUEZ" line.
THE DIAGNOSTICS
1. The imprint. "COL. ARIAS." or "COL-ARIAS" (for Colección Arias), in small capitals. It sits at the top left on upright cards and runs up the left edge on landscape cards. Both spellings occur.
2. The "MA" monogram. A small white script "MA" in the lower-left corner of the image itself. It's part of the printing plate, not a stamp added later, and it appears on all nine of ours.
3. The copyright line. On some cards, there's a faint line in the lower right of the image that reads "ES PROPIEDAD DE M. ARIAS RODRIGUEZ." Look for it on the Puente de España and the Magallanes column. It echoes the "propiedad de M. Arias" credits in La Ilustración Artística.
4. The Spanish caption. Spaced sans-serif capitals, centered under the image, with the place in parentheses: (MANILA), (LAGUNA), (FILIPINAS). American-published cards from the same period usually use English captions.
Layout helps, too. The image doesn't fill the whole card. On landscape cards, a wide blank strip on the right is reserved for the message, as the day's undivided-back rules required. Most of the images are square-cut rectangles. In our group, only the Binondo card has rounded corners.
The back
Now turn it over. What you're looking for is an undivided Universal Postal Union back:
"Union Postale Universelle." in a light serif, upper left, ending in a full stop.
"CARTE POSTALE" beneath it, in outlined, open-face display capitals.
An ornamental frame printed in brown: a lozenge-and-star band between fine rules, a scalloped inner edge, and square corner blocks with a geometric fret.
A dotted stamp box in the upper right, with no printed postage instructions.
No dividing line, and no publisher's name anywhere.
That last point matters most. The back never names Arias, so you can only identify him from the front.
And notice what the back doesn't say: "Private Mailing Card," the American wording used from 1898 to 1901. Arias stuck with the European format instead.
The postal clues
Because the entire back was reserved for the address, senders wrote their messages across the picture side. Many also stuck the stamp there. So check the front for US stamps overprinted "PHILIPPINES," which were issued from June 1899 to 1906. Our used examples are dated 1904 to 1905, and several carry 1¢ green Franklins from the Series 1902.
My favorite is the Puente de España card. A collector named Ygnacio García, of Magallanes 7 in Intramuros, wrote in red ink that he'd heard the addressee collected cards and wanted to trade. He asked for a reply "with the stamp on the picture side." Card collectors, swapping cards in 1905 Manila. Some things really never change, fellow collectors.
Once you've seen a few, you can easily recognize his style. Buildings are shot straight on, or at a slight angle, from street level, with open ground in front and a pale, empty sky above. On landscapes and river views, the horizon sits low. Small figures provide scale: the children at the Matadero gate, the cart drivers at Calamba. The tones are soft and low-contrast, all gentle greys. Patient, quiet, and never showy.
It's the same eye that framed Bagumbayan.
I guess it begs the question, "how rare are they?" Rare enough, and for several reasons stacked together. A small run of titles. A single Manila publisher. An early date. Spanish captions. Early cards were made mostly for tourists and Americans, and many never left the islands. Humidity and white ants took them, an enemy every Filipino collector knows too well.
We found no public auction result for an Arias postcard, so we can't quote a price yet. But keep an eye on León, Salcedo and the collectors' club auctions. At this rate, it's only a matter of time.
Eventually, Arias left the islands. In 1912, he was appointed Spanish Vice-Consul in Yokohama, and he died in Japan in 1924.
We heard from someone identifying as his great-grandchild once who wrote that most of his original plates were lost when Manila was bombed at the end of the Second World War. We can't verify that. But if it's true, every surviving print and card carries that much more weight.
And here's one more gap, which Veluz also points out: no photograph of Arias himself has ever surfaced. The man who gave us so many faces from our history left none of his own.
So why does all of this matter?
Because the Spanish–Philippine War is the least visible part of our history. We read about it. We rarely get to see it.
And Arias is a big reason we can see any of it at all.
Think about where he stood. He was at Bagumbayan when Rizal fell, and he went back twelve days later for the Thirteen Martyrs. He marched with the column that broke Cavite and set off the chain of events from Tejeros to Maragondon. He climbed to Biak-na-Bato. He watched Aguinaldo ride into Malolos behind four white horses, and he stood in the same plaza when the Republic was proclaimed. He photographed the badges of the Filipino army, using a chart the revolutionaries themselves lent him. He watched Spain leave Zamboanga in the rain, and when he was turned away from Baler church at gunpoint, he photographed the Filipino side instead.
He wasn't neutral, of course. He was a Spaniard, working for Spanish papers, and mostly shooting from behind Spanish lines. His captions use the language of his time, and we should read him that way. But he also sold Rizal's novels under the counter and got close enough to the Republic to borrow its insignia chart. His pictures sit right on the seam between the two sides. That's exactly why they're so valuable to us now.
Then there are the postcards. Many of the scenes on them no longer exist. The Magallanes column, put up in 1848, was destroyed in 1945, along with much of the Manila he photographed. For those of us still learning what life under Spain looked like, those soft grey cards aren't souvenirs. They're evidence.
The market has certainly noticed. A print of the execution set a record at León. Another, in an album of 104 albumen prints, anchored a ₱3,036,800 sale at Salcedo in June, and in the Lot 575 scrapbook we wrote about earlier, our own attribution study found an execution print taken from the same spot on the Paseo as the Army Museum image (the same lamppost, the same staked sapling, the same crossbar pole) but at a different moment. Very likely a second exposure by the same photographer, though not yet proven.
Prices will do what prices do. But the real value is much simpler. A bookseller with a camera kept walking toward the history happening all around him; and, more than a century later, because of him, we can still see it.
If you have an Arias card, or a print with his mark, please message us. We'd love to see it. And maybe, like Ygnacio García, we can even trade.
Sources
Nigel Gooding, "Agencia Editorial / Manuel Arias Rodríguez," Spanish Philippines: Private Business Firms
Blas Sierra de la Calle, OSA, "La fotografía en Filipinas 1845–1898," Archivo Agustiniano (2022)
La Ilustración Artística (Barcelona), nos. 901, 907, 924, 926, 931 (1899)
Federico de Monteverde y Sedano, Campaña de Filipinas: La División Lachambre, 1897 (Madrid, 1898)
Jonathan Best, "Postcards from the edge," Philstar, 28 July 2009; "Postcards from the Age," Filipinas, Nov. 1994
Wikidata Q84514442, Manuel Arias Rodríguez
The Diarist.ph, "León's auction proves strong demand…," 15 Sept 2026
The Diarist.ph, "How this rare Rizal photograph is just the beginning," 2 June 2026
Michael Charleston Chua, "Of heroes, aliases and remembrances," The Manila Times, 8 Sept 2026
NHCP, "Siege of Baler"
Richardson, "Warfare by Pulong," Philippine Studies (Ateneo)
Leon Gallery The Magnificent September 2026 Auction Catalog
Puell de la Villa, "La campaña de la División Lachambre," Desperta Ferro Contemporánea 36 (2019)
Mona Magno-Veluz, "Shooting Heroes," Mighty Magulang (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOCEGg4BjJU
https://pinoykollektor.blogspot.com/2012/09/76-guerra-de-filipina-by-m-arias.html
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