‘All dreams are valid!’

Thus posted a joyful Xyza Cruz Bacani on her Facebook page, after receiving news that she had been chosen one of seven Human Rights Fellows by the Magnum Foundation.

The fellowship provides Bacani a six-week scholarship in New York, as well as mentoring and editorial advice from top photojournalists, introductions to photo editors, and similar support that may facilitate independent freelance work with international media networks.

Life couldn’t have turned out better for the 27-year-old Filipino who works as a domestic in Hong Kong, and whose striking black-and-white photographs initially posted on Facebook have drawn a global following for their gritty theme of isolation amid the crowded cityscape.

But what caught the eye of Magnum Foundation, which “champions in-depth [images] … that foster empathy, engagement, and positive social change,” are Bacani’s unblinking look into and documentation of the lives of abused domestics, most of them overseas Filipino workers like herself.

A Nueva Vizcaya native, Bacani quit her nursing studies nine years ago to become a domestic like her mother and to help put a younger sibling through school. Six days a week she cleans, cooks and babysits for a wealthy Chinese family in Hong Kong. On her days off, she takes her trusty camera and transforms into an observer of the bustling city.

“When I’m wearing my camera I’m not a helper anymore; I’m an ordinary girl,” Bacani says. It’s an oddly liberating experience, she says, adding that her Nikon D90 acts like a shield, protecting her from the overt racism, stereotyping and discrimination that Hong Kong citizens often throw at domestics.

The camera, bought on a loan from her employer, has opened doors for Bacani. And her raw images have provided another perspective to what has long been touted as a shortcut solution to the Philippines’ perennial economic doldrums.

The photos, some of them taken inside the Bethune House Migrant Women’s Refuge for abused migrant workers, graphically belie official claims that Hong Kong is one of the friendlier host countries for OFWs, never mind that domestics there are required to stay with their employers, an arrangement that opens them to long hours of toil and the possibility of sexual abuse.

(Hong Kong also compels domestics with terminated contracts to go back to their home countries within 14 days after losing their jobs, and bars foreign domestics from full citizenship even if they have fulfilled the residency requirement.)

At the shelter, Bacani’s own status as a migrant worker helped seal her ties with her women subjects, resulting in a series of portraits that expose the bitter fruit of the Philippines’ decades-old labor export policy. As a result of that policy, there are now at least 170,000 Filipino workers in Hong Kong, most of them domestics. Of Hong Kong’s 320,000 foreign domestics, 50 percent are from the Philippines, 47 percent from Indonesia, and the rest from Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The Philippines’ labor figures tell a similar story: Of our 2.2 million OFWs as of 2012, 48 percent are women, who often put in long hours in domestic work for measly wages to buoy the economy at home with their regular remittances.

Which makes Bacani’s case even more extraordinary. Even with two generations of domestics in the family, she has managed to transcend life’s limitations with grit and determination, hard work, and innate talent put to good use. Her story is also heartening proof that individuals by themselves can bring about social change, as did her employer who had loaned her the money for the camera and thus set into motion a cycle of good fortune that changed this young woman’s life.

As if to stoke that cycle into overdrive, the Magnum Foundation anticipates that the fellowship would further equip Bacani with skills to create “effective visual stories [to] advance human rights” in her home country.

Despite the accolade, Bacani, who has had two solo exhibitions in Hong Kong and was part of a group show in Macau since she started her hobby four years ago, remains focused on her goal: “I just want to shoot, and tell [the] stories of those people who [remain] unheard.”

She adds: “I want to be a photographer with a purpose. If my images can help people, it makes me feel useful to society.”