MANILA, Philippines ? The images are at once magical yet disturbing.

A boy, ecstatic despite his apparent drowning in the arms of a nymph. It is not clear if she is saving him or pushing him deeper into her depths.

A group of Mad Max warriors, confronting an unseen enemy whose burly legs and booted feet frame their apprehension. An elegant grouping of Chinese courtiers, their delicate contortions giving them the appearance of Tang dynasty calligraphy.

The images could be fashion photographs. Or they could stand, rightly and singularly, as artistic montages.

But the images conjured up by photographer-actor Jojit Lorenzo are, first and foremost, publicity stills (though still they seldom are) for theater productions. For the past two years, his work has, slowly and magically, transformed the way plays and musicals are publicized and marketed in the country.

Imaginative takes

It may be right to say that Lorenzo, at 36, has updated the look of the theater publicity shot, and helped to change the public?s perception of the state of local theater.

After seeing his work, the two-dimensional ?posed? pictorials (with the frozen expressions, studied movement and constant mugging) that the public used to associate with theater productions now look sadly static and dated.

Lorenzo has done that with his own imaginative takes on a play?s text and his mastery of digital enhancement.

Best of all, in a development that mirrors today?s democratic movement of young actors and directors at home in both English and Filipino material, Lorenzo is now the photographer of choice for companies as diverse as Repertory Philippines, Tanghalang Pilipino, Peta, Dulaang UP, Atlantis Productions, Bulwagang Gantimpala and Philippine Opera Company.

His intuitive takes in visualizing a text and creating a succinct image stems from his own background as a theater actor.

He began acting for Bulwagang Gantimpala after going through workshops in 1989 after graduating from La Salle, where he majored in Computer Technology.

His skills as an actor and his deeper understanding of the way a play works became honed through 10 years of participation in several productions. Like most of today?s young theater actors, he did the rounds of Bulwagang Gantimpala, Peta and Tanghalang Pilipino while holding a day job at HSBC.

He remembers pictorials of the plays he was cast in and the standard routine of posing against a black curtain, enacting a scene until the photographer shouted, ?Freeze!?

?Theater is all about movement and motion and emotion. I was tinkering with the camera at the time, and I thought there must be a way to put some motion, some depth into the images,? he says.

Honesty, integrity

His elder brother, the respected photographer Jovel Lorenzo, helped him get a start in photography, teaching him about the use of available light.

His colleagues in theater would use him as a photographer ?partly because they wanted to encourage me, partly because I was available and cheaper.?

?Kuya Jovel taught me a lot about the need for honesty and integrity in the work. And by looking at the works of painters like Caravaggio and photographers like Ansel Adams and Diane Arbus, I learned about the use of light to make a photograph more dramatic.?

But the use of digital enhancement in his own work came with Dulaang UP?s ?Orosman at Zafira,? last year?s incendiary take on the archaic Balagtas text directed by Dexter Santos.

?Theater is a collaborative effort, and I always rely on the director?s own takes on a text. Dexter is also a choreographer, and his vision for the play had a lot of dance and movement.?

The resulting folio was, quite simply, a breakthrough in theater photography. No scenes in particular were dramatized. Instead, a set of evocative images with actors floating under water, among clouds, in ethereal landscapes, their expressions ranging from ecstatic to rapacious.

Best of all, the photos captured the mood of the new production and put the audience in the proper frame to appreciate Santos? devised adaptation of the Balagtas komedya.

?Orosman? was followed by Repertory Philippines? ?Hamlet,? directed by Ana Abad-Santos. In keeping with her post-nuclear take on Shakespeare?s alienated prince, he set the actors against a bleak landscape, in attitudes of defiance and aggression that stressed the mad grabs for power in the court of Elsinore.

For Peta?s musical, ?Skin- Deep,? he created the ironic yet poignant image of actress-singer May Bayot contemplating her own surgically enhanced face.

For two separate productions of ?Mulan,? one by Rep, the other by Tanghalang Pilipino, he came up with two entirely different takes, one stark and elegant in its calligraphic neatness, the other profuse with clouds and vibrant colors. Both were undoubtedly Chinese, albeit of different periods and aesthetic sensibilities.

For Tanghalang Pilipino?s ?Waiting for Godot,? he played with the stereotypical images of the jologs crowd, recreating Vladimir and Estragon as two ridiculously skinny street tambays in sando and puruntong shorts.

Actors working with him on a shoot have come expecting to be made to dance, contort, move constantly while perched on platforms and ladders. When he has enough raw images, he secludes himself in his workshop (the aptly named Photokitchen) to concoct the finished images on his laptop.

It?s gotten so that having Lorenzo credited as a photographer for any production has become a kind of status symbol among theater companies. He readily shares a part of this year?s output on his laptop.

For Rep?s upcoming ?Sweeney Todd,? he shows two portraits of Audrey Gemora and Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo. They are not so much photographs as they are paintings in the lurid style of old Hollywood horror flicks.

Apt companion

Still being tinkered with are images for Tanghalang Pilipino?s ?A Streetcar Named Desire,? Dulaang UP?s ?Lulu? (in which he returns as a stage actor in the role of Jack the Ripper).

Once done, the images are displayed on his webpage, www.jojitlorenzo.com. The images are tagged on the Facebook walls and Multiply accounts of actors and theater folk as a means of further publicizing their work.

Still, he is choosy about the offers coming in from other mediums. One TV project that excited him was ABS-CBN?s ?Dyosa? with Anne Curtis. The subject of myth and reality was something he really wanted to experiment with.

While it seems only natural that his use of artifice should apply to the aesthetics of fashion photography, he shies away from the genre.

?I really work better with people who don?t pose, who are used to constantly moving and changing their facial expressions spontaneously. People will say my work is all about effects. But if they really look at the details of the photographs, it?s all about emotion and atmosphere and nuance. Despite the effects, the images are honest in the way the actors show a certain emotion or mood. I like working with theater actors because being beautiful all the time is not a prerequisite of the work.?

He shares two images of Ana Abad-Santos; one as the anxious, slightly exhausted Paula in Rep?s production of ?A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino,? the other showing her delicate features contorted in a soul-bearing scream.

?I really can?t call myself a photographer,? he says in all humility. ?At this stage of my development, my work is too heavily dependent on effects, on layering, on the whole set of possibilities that Photoshop can offer. Right now, the use of enhancement is a big argument against in the world of serious photographers. I?d like to be known as a serious photographer like Kuya Jovel one day, but right now, it?s these images that theater companies come to me for.?

He shares yet another folio of images, a very personal collection. They are images of rural children and stray dogs, two favorite subjects of his. All of them were taken during his forays into the countryside. None of them are enhanced or cropped in any way.

This is the work of another Jojit Lorenzo, the point-and-shoot photographer, capturing slices of life so different from his stock-in-trade. They aren?t for public consumption. Not just yet.

The argument for and against the use of enhancement is a valid one. But then again, at this stage of Lorenzo?s career, it is the theater he is working for, an arena where artifice, staging and effect are key factors in moving an audience.

Lorenzo?s theatrical approach serves the medium magnificently.