📧 EMAIL

berniceonduty@gmail.com

👤 About

I'm a Filipino documentary photographer exploring the relationships between people, animals, and the environments they share. My work explores what care looks like: how we care for one another, for other species, and for the places we call home, especially in the face of inequality, environmental change, and loss.

Growing up as the daughter of overseas Filipino workers, I spent many summers at my grandmother's home in Bulacan, where I became absorbed in old family photo albums. Seeing my mother as a child through those photographs revealed a version of her I had never known, and taught me that photographs can deepen our understanding of people beyond what we see every day. Years later, after a layoff in 2020, I returned to photography with a commitment to documentary storytelling.

My early work focused on Indigenous communities, women, and children navigating poverty and social inequality. Over time, and as my dog grew older, caring for him deepened my curiosity about the relationships between people, animals, and the ecosystems that sustain them. I am drawn to stories that reveal our shared dependence on one another.

Today I split my time between photography assignments, long-term documentary projects, and my work at the Asia for Animals Coalition, where I support an international network of animal protection organizations.

Bernice is a Filipino photographer curious about people, animals, and the places they share, in cities and nature. Through photography, she tries to understand how systemic forces and environmental crises shape the lives of all living things.

She came to photography through an unexpected route. Growing up as a daughter of overseas Filipino workers, she spent summers at her grandmother's house in Bulacan with no cable TV, no internet, just stacks of black-and-white photo albums. Poring over images of her mother as a child, she realized for the first time that photographs could add a whole dimension to someone she thought she already knew. That stayed with her through a design career and years of shooting on her own time, until layoffs gave her the space to pursue documentary work more seriously. She started with stories of children, Indigenous communities, and women in poverty, and has since been finding her way toward the environment and the animal world.

Her images have appeared in local and international publications including Der Spiegel, the South China Morning Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and ABS-CBN News. Her NGO clients include UNICEF Philippines, Oxfam Philippines, DENR-SMARTSeas, and Start Network. Today she splits her time between photography assignments, long-term documentary projects, and her work as an office coordinator at Asia for Animals Coalition.

For assignments/inquiries, feel free to email her at hello@bernicebeltran.com/berniceonduty@gmail.com.

⭐️ Grants

  • iStorya Studios (2023-present)

  • Pulitzer Global Reporting Grant (2022)

  • Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Photojournalists’ Center of the Philippines Fellowship (2021)

  • Earth Journalism Network Asia-Pacific (2020)

  • National Geographic Society COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists (2020)

🫱🏼‍🫲🏾 Select Clients

🫱🏼‍🫲🏾 Clients

UNICEF, The Asia Foundation, Oxfam Pilipinas, DENR-SMARTSeas, Start Network, Der Spiegel, ABS-CBN News, The Christian Science Monitor, The South China Morning Post

📚 EDUCATION

  • VII Foundation Level 1 Visual Journalism Program (2025)

  • Enhancing the Protection of Women Journalists and Women’s Human Rights in the Context of Shrinking Democratic Space in Asia by UN Women & OHCHR (2021)

  • Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Photojournalists’ Center of the Philippines Fellowship (2021)

  • Women Photograph Mentorship Class (2021)

  • BFA Visual Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman (2004 -2009)

A smiling woman writing on a piece of paper in her home

📸 R&D: A co-created photo book with a teen who aged out of the care system, finding his own agency and identity. Also learning to use flash and brewing something with Ria. (Updated July. 5, 2026)

👋🏼 SOCIALS

📍 Laguna, Philippines

02:47 PM

© Copyright 2026

Website by Brook Hayfield

📸 R&D: A co-created photo book with a teen who aged out of the care system, finding his own agency and identity. Also learning to use flash and brewing something with Ria. (Updated July. 5, 2026)

👋🏼 SOCIALS

📍 Laguna, Philippines

02:47 PM

© Copyright 2026

Website by Brook Hayfield

📸 R&D: A co-created photo book with a teen who aged out of the care system, finding his own agency and identity. Also learning to use flash and brewing something with Ria. (Updated July. 5, 2026)

👋🏼 SOCIALS

📍 Laguna, Philippines

02:47 PM

© Copyright 2026

Website by Brook Hayfield