Two weeks ahead of their birthday in 2021, Joy Celine Asto and her good friend Ennuh Tiu decided to do a photo shoot with their point and shoot film cameras.
They imagined a parallel universe, perhaps somewhere in Japan, where they threw a party but all their guests ditched them. It was their creative response to not being able to celebrate with friends due to the pandemic. A year later, they released a 24 page photo zine based on the photographs from this series. It also became one of the first projects they published under Saturday Press, an independent publisher and zine collective they co founded.
About Joy Celine Asto and Ennuh Tiu
Joy Celine Asto is a writer, editor, and film photographer from Manila, Philippines. She regularly contributes to photography and creative publications, including Photofocus, 35mmc, and Fstoppers. Primarily a portrait photographer influenced by emotive and conceptual approaches, her work has also appeared in print and online magazines such as She Shoots Film: Self-Portraits Issue, Casimir Magazine, ANON Magazine, EMUSLIVE, and Film Shooters Collective. Her portraits were also selected for Flickr’s Your Best Shot in 2016 and 2017.
She also self-publishes zines and photobooks, with Stories from Year Twenty-Nine, a personal year-long project documenting the final year of her twenties, standing as her most significant self-published work. [Official Website]
Ennuh Tiu is a Manila based lens based artist and photographer whose work explores self discovery, personal relationships, and identity through a diaristic and stream of consciousness approach. Her practice spans portraiture, scanography, and experimental lens based techniques, often drawing from lived experience and collaborative processes.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film in Singapore as part of Women in Film and Photography 2021, and she has participated in the Angkor Photo Festival through both the workshops in 2025 and the Projections Showcase in 2020.
During the Angkor Photo Workshops she developed a body of work focused on Siem Reap’s drag community and the intimate rituals of performance and transformation. This work later became part of a roving exhibition that has toured cities including New York, Bangkok, and Phnom Penh, among others. That same year she was also among the selected artists to exhibit at the first FOTO Bali Festival in Bali, Indonesia, representing the Philippines.
In addition to her personal projects, she also works as an editorial, fashion, and portrait photographer.
