Posted September 22, 2019 by MENTAL IDEAS! Directors & Ambassadors

Ricky Sadiosa

Resident Photographer Enrique (‘Ricky’) Rueda Sadiosa has made Hong Kong his second home since the 1990s. Originally from the Philippines, he’s traveled to more than 150 international cities and countries. He loves connecting with fellow photographers and admiring their work. A passionate human rights advocate and activist, in 2017 Ricky was shortlisted for the Justice Centre Hong Kong’s Human Rights Art Prize for his photo journalism. Ricky recently spent 5 years traveling the world in the footsteps of Philippine national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal. During his travels, he’s produced a feature-length documentary film and taken photographs for his latest 500-page coffee table book.

In 2010, Ricky accidentally ran to be President of the Philippines after he showed up to take photos of the presidential selection process and accidentally got ushered into the wrong room. Instead of being surrounded by journalists, he found himself surrounded by presidential hopefuls. Despite being woefully unprepared, Ricky couldn’t resist the opportunity to have a crack at running for president himself. He improvised a campaign speech on national television and duly progressed to the next three stages of the contest. He was eventually disqualified. But only for having spent just 3 days in the Philippines that year. (NOTE: Apparently, if you want to run for President of the Philippines, you have to have been resident there for at least a week. Bah!)

In fact, Ricky has an uncanny talent for showing up in a place just as history is about to get made. While tracing Dr. Jose Rizal’s footsteps to Paris, no sooner had he landed and made his way to Notre Dame, it burned down. But it did give him an opportunity to take this picture…

Having documented the Umbrella Revolution in 2014, Ricky coincidentally returned to Hong Kong the day the 2019 Extradition Protests started. He’s been out on the streets night and day since then, mingling with protesters and police, trying to capture the complexity and intensity of the protests on camera in an unbiassed way. Mental Ideas has been out and about documenting Ricky documenting the protests.

Mental Ideas is proud and excited to be working with Ricky as our newest recruit and Resident Photographer on two new art projects, ExperiMENTAL and Healing Hong Kong. Both projects will culminate in art and photography exhibitions at our new premises in Hong Kong early next year and we want you to get involved! Ricky will also be taking part as a guest on our Mental Ideas Podcast after he came out with this off-the-cuff corker: “I’ve often wondered if passion isn’t a form of mental illness?” Umm? And just like that, a new episode of the Mental Ideas Podcast was born!

You can view Ricky’s striking photographs of the protests on Mental Ideas here: https://mentalideas.org/2019/09/25/hong-kong-protests-in-pictures/

Ricky’s documentary film about the international travels of Dr. Jose Rizal will be screened for the first time in Hong Kong early 2020, while his 500-page accompanying coffee-table book goes to print Oct 2019.