David Lazar: Myanmar (Burma)

Photo © David Lazar -All Rights Reserved
Here's an introduction to David Lazar, a photographer and musician hailing all the way from Brisbane, Australia. With a long roster of awards under his belt, David was the Overall Winner in the 2009 Intrepid Photography Competition, won the Best Wildlife 2008 category and the Best Culture and Portrait 2007 category in the Peregrine Photography of the World Competition. He also won the Best Landscape 2007 category in the Intrepid Adventure Photo Competition, and was published in JPGMag, Intrepid Travel Magazines, Digital Camera, and Digital Photo of the UK.

He recently traveled to Burma, and returned with lovely images of this wonderful country and of its people. These images are grouped under a gallery he titled "Myanmar, Say A Little Prayer". Also explore David's other galleries of the Middle East and India.

David tells us that he was drawn to the designs of the Thanaka paste on the women and children’s faces. This is the traditional Burmese paste made the bark of trees and applied to the skin each day to keep it moisturized and protected from the sun. Thanaka has been used by Burmese women for over 2000 years.

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Books: Claudia Wiens: Burma

Claudia Wiens was based in Cairo, and is now in Istanbul working as a freelance photographer, and is represented by Getty Images. She has now published a book of her photographs of Burma and titled "Of Dung-Beetle Messengers And Infamous Crickets" which, although I haven't seen yet, does provide Claudia's interesting visual narrative of this lovely country and its people. Have a good look at the section involving Nats.

I'm glad that Claudia chose this blurry image for her book's cover since, as regular readers of this blog know, I'm enormously partial to motion blurred images myself. Good choice, Claudia! For further images of Burma and other galleries, visit Claudia's website.

I met Claudia at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (FPW) in Mexico City, where she worked on a project involving female Lucha Libre wrestlers.

A previous post of Claudia Wiens on TTP is here.

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Felice Willat: The Spirit of Burma

©Felice Willat-All Rights Reserved
Felice Willat is founder and president of Tools With Heart, a company that develops products to enhance personal discovery and well being. A successful entrepreneur, and with a strong background in network television production, Felice is also an accomplished photographer, as evidenced by the recent publication of her photographs of Burma on the pages of Matador, an online international travel magazine, in a feature titled In Focus: The Spirit of Burma.

From Felice's many lovely photographs, I chose the one above of evening traffic over the famed U-Bein bridge in Amarapura.

Her photographs are on display in an exhibit titled ALMS - "Offerings" at the Topanga Canyon Gallery (Los Angeles) from April 7th - May 3rd, 2009. Further details on the venue are here. The photographs also inspired her new book, "The Quiet Between - Song Of Burma".

Felice is one of the photographers joining my Gnawa Photo~Expedition due to start on June 19, and I look forward to see her work from this Moroccan extravaganza!

Her website with more photographs is here.

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New York Times: Myanmar (Burma)

Photo ©International Herald Tribune-All Rights Reserved.
The New York Times has launched its new Global Edition on its website, announcing that it combined its international reporting and that of the International Herald Tribune, to provide readers with a continuous flow of geopolitical, business, sports and fashion coverage from a global perspective.

One of its slideshows featured is a powerful photo essay titled "Dying and Alone in Myanmar", a collection of black & white photographs (only credited to the International Herald Tribune).

It covers the work of 23 clinics operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) that are the primary dispensers in Myanmar of the anti retroviral drugs that can prolong the lives of those infected with H.I.V.

The accompanying article is by Seth Mydans.

Addendum: I just realized that the NYT's Global Edition is the new home on the Web for the International Herald Tribune...is this another cost-cutting measure or is there more to it than that?

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Sanjit Das: Dongria Kondh

Photograph Sanjit Das-All Rights Reserved
Sanjit Das is a documentary photographer, specializing in social issues as seen through the backdrop of India’s changing social, economic and political landscape, and he's focused on documenting the lives and conditions of those who are being overlooked by modernization.

His work is published in books, book covers, newspapers and journals in India and overseas, including The Financial Times, The Independent, New York Times and the Washington Post. He also works for a range of UN agencies and NGOs.

From his wide array of photo galleries, I've chosen the one on the Dongria Kondh community of Orissa.

The indigenous Kondh tribes people have lived for generations in the forests of Niyamgiri hills, in Kalahandi and Raygoda districts of Orissa, surviving by foraging in the forests, raising livestocks and through agriculture. However, the arrival of a mining and refinery project on their ancestral domain is endangering their survival, and their tribal/religious identity.

Sanjit has also photographed the survivors of Cyclone Nargis in Burma in a remarkable slideshow photo-essay titled All They Could Carry. The photo essay is on the pages of the wonderful Foto8, the website of 8 Magazine, a photojournalism magazine.

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Adrianne Koteen: Burma

Photograph © Adrianne Koteen-All Rights Reserved
Adrianne Koteen attended the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City, and it's there that I had the good fortune of reviewing her portfolio.

She's a freelance photographer, educator and arts consultant based in San Francisco, and her biography reveals that she works internationally with a variety of non-profits, museums, and individual clients. Adrienne is also the program coordinator for Fotovision, a Bay Area based non-profit whose mission is to advance social documentary photography though education, dialogue and community. Her photography has taken her to six continents, and her work has been used in numerous non-profit settings, including an Imagining Ourselves exhibit at the United Nations.

While reviewing Adrienne's portfolio at the workshop, I stopped at the above photograph of a Burmese monk looking over lake Taungthamanthe from the U Bein bridge in Amarapura. I thought it was an exceptionally beautiful photograph, worthy of being entered in photography contests, and if I were a judge, of winning. At the very least, I think this photograph could be used as an ideal double-spread for articles on Burma, particularly because of its composition...the right hand expanse is perfect for titles and preambles to the main text.

I foresee an extremely bright future for Adrienne in social documentary photography, as well as in travel editorial photography, should she choose to pursue her career in these fields.

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Burma: Cyclone Nargis

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
The latest news is that at least 22,000 Burmese have died and up to a million people have been left homeless by the catastrophic cyclone that battered the country. The death toll from the disaster includes 10,000 people in the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region alone. It's also reported that Rangoon has been badly hit.

Regrettably, it's expected that the death toll will rise further.

I hope that my photograph of a Burmese nun praying at the Schwedagon Paya in Rangoon is an appropriate choice for this post.

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Beat Presser: Oasis of Silence

Photograph © Beat Presser-All Rights Reserved
When Beat Presser was in late teens, he traveled through Southeast Asia, and met with a car accident in Thailand. Healed from a serious spine injury by monks in a Buddhist monastery, he vowed to do something in return, should he become the photographer he intended to be.

Between 2000 and 2004, he returned to live in Theravada Buddhism monasteries in Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Sri Lanka, and photographed the essence of Buddhism. Oasis of Silence is the resulting photographic exhibition and book.

Presser also produced an accompanying website My Oasis of Silence allows participants to post their profile and photographs, and to interact among each other and with Beat Presser, thus creating a growing community and allowing a permanent exchange.

Beat Presser's Buddhism Oasis of Silence is well produced and its background music is haunting, but the B&W photographs are too small to fully appreciate Presser's artistry.

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Bas Uterwijk: Burma

Image © Bas Uterwijk -All Rights Reserved
Bas Uterwijk lives in Amsterdam, and has just returned from Burma with wonderful photographs made during his travels. Although he recently got interested in photography, he's been telling stories with images for most of his career as a computer graphics artist for a video game company.

His Burma portfolio contains lovely photographs of Burmese novices, monks as well as depictions of everyday Burmese life. The photograph I chose for this post and the rest of his gallery are proof that we'll hear more of Bas.

Video games and photography...what else could anyone want in life?

Bas Uterwijk's Burma

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Felice Willat: Burma

Image Copyright © Felice Willat-All Rights Reserved
Having co-founded Day Runner Inc, Felice Willat is now founder and president of Tools With Heart, a company that develops products to enhance personal discovery and well being. A successful entrepreneur, and with a strong background in network television production, Felice is also an accomplished photographer, and recently returned from Burma.

Felice's lovely photographs of Burma and its resilient people can be seen on her new website...she's generous with her work, and her gallery features over 90 photographs. I found her photographs of the fishermen of Inle Lake to be especially striking for their color, composition and luminosity...and although her remaining photographs are equally beautiful, I chose the one above for this post. The colors and the perfectly diagonal alignment of the fisherman's stance, arm and oar make it my favorite.

The Intha fishmen of Inle Lake use a leg-rowing technique, and fish the waters of the lake with a conical netted trap.

She hopes her photographs capture the poetic nature of its people and places...I'm sure you'll agree that she succeeded.

Felice Willat's Burma

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Frédéric Sautereau: Burma

Image © Frédéric Sautereau-All Rights Reserved
The International Herald Tribune reports that more than 1,500 people from over 20 countries have registered for a major gems auction in Burma this week, despite calls from human rights groups to block the purchase of precious stones from the military ruled country. Burma is one of the biggest jade and gem-producing countries in the world, and international auctions are a major revenue earner for the regime. It is expected that the auction will generate the equivalent of $200 million. International business transactions with Burma are done in Euros because of the United States' sanctions...so here's the question: why don't the Europeans follow our lead in this?

I thought that Frédéric Sautereau's recent October 2007 photo essay on Burma would be appropriate in conjunction with the above news, which contrasts with the poverty and miserable conditions afflicting the people of Burma today. The black & white photographs by Frédéric do an admirable job in conveying the hopelessness of the Burmese especially in view of the callous disregard of international businesses to their plight.

Frédéric Sautereau, director of the collective agency Oeil public, is a freelance photograph since 1995. He's principally a documentary photographer whose career has taken him to the war-torn cities of Belfast, Nicosia, Mostar, Jérusalem, and Mitrovica.

Frédéric Sautereau's Burma

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New York Times: Burma

Image © New York Times-All Rights Reserved
News agencies reported that the pro-democracy leader in Myanmar, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, recently with members of her party, the National League for Democracy, for the first time in three years as well as with Aung Kyi, the general appointed as a liaison by Myanmar’s military government.

The New York Times reports that "Six weeks after its violent crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks, Myanmar’s military government has telegraphed alternating signs of combativeness and flexibility. Analysts say they are watching to determine whether the ruling generals’ outreach to Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi is genuine or whether it falls into a well-established pattern of short-lived concessions toward dissidents followed by a return to a hard-line stance."

In my view and that of others, Burma's military government is buying time as it always does in similar situations, and hoping that the international community will soon be distracted by other world events...such as the current turmoil in Pakistan. By the way, isn't the current political situation in Pakistan eerily similar to that of Burma?

Another feature from the New York Times on Burma

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New York Times: Burma, Uneasy Days

Image Copyright © The New York Times-All Rights Reserved
A recent article by Choe Sang-Hun in the New York Times reports that as the lunch gong chimed through the tree-shaded Mahagandhayon Monastery in Mandalay , several hundred monks in burgundy robes lined up on a mid-October day, all holding alms bowls, returning after seeking donations. It is a common scene in Myanmar, formerly Burma, where one out of every 100 people, many of them children, are monks. But the lunch line at the Mahagandhayon Monastery, the country’s largest, used to be much longer.

A senior monk told the NY Times reporter: “We usually have 1,400 monks here,” said a senior monk. “Because of the situation, parents took 1,000 of them home.”

The article ends with this: "In mid-October at Mahagandhayon, the monks were going about their daily routine. The senior monk said he hoped that the rest of the students would return in a month or so. One young monk who had remained said, “Please go out and tell the world exactly what really has happened in this country.” He added, “I am scared just talking to you about this.”

I've been asked by many TTP's readers if I would travel to Burma under the present circumstances. A difficult question to answer...on one hand, traveling to Burma invariably channels some funds to the military junta, and gives it a veneer of legitimacy...but on the other hand, not traveling threatens the livelihood of many Burmese who rely on tourism for their very survival. Naturally, the foreign travel agencies -because of commercial justifications- use the latter as a reason not to cancel their tours.

Personally, I would wait to see whether the international mediation efforts between the junta and the opposition result in an improved political climate. For those who are still going, I think you'll find less populated monasteries, and certainly desperate vendors. Please donate generously to the monasteries and monks, and be expansive in your tangible and moral support to the common people you'll meet. The gentle people of Burma need help.

Uneasy Days for Monks in Myanmar

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New York Times: Burma, Ominously Calm

Image Copyright © The New York Times -All Rights Reserved
The New York Times brings us a cluster of updated reports on the situation in Burma...an article, a slideshow, and a podcast.

Distressingly, the article carries this paragraph:

“It’s not peace you see here, it’s silence; it’s a forced silence,” said a 46-year-old writer who joined last month’s protests in Yangon and was now on the run, carrying with him a worn copy of his favorite book, George Orwell’s “1984.” “We are the military’s slaves. We want democracy. We want to wait no longer. But we are afraid of their guns.”

The whole article is here.

The slideshow's photographs don't carry a photographer's by-line...only the copyright by the New York Times...presumably to protect the photographer who may still be in the country. Incidentally, I'm surprised that the newspaper still insists in using Myanmar as the country's name....the name that was chosen by the military junta. Most British newspapers here use the name of Burma.

The slideshow is here.

The podcast is here.

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Inside Burma: Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is one of the few international television networks that managed to get its correspondent inside Burma during the recent uprisings. The footage is now shown on YouTube, and parts of it are chilling.

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James Nachtwey: Burma Aftermath

Image Copyright © James Nachtwey-All Rights Reserved
Here's a gallery of photographs by James Nachtwey as published by Time magazine on its website. I'm not certain when these photographs were made, but the implication is that Nachtwey was photographing in Rangoon recently.

The latest from Burma is that its ruling junta has restored Internet service and relaxed a nighttime curfew, thus easing a crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Internet cafe owners around Myanmar's largest city, Rangoon, said they were looking forward to reopening after service was restored Sunday. Another sign of some relaxation is that the curfew was cut to four hours, 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., starting last night.

However, Amnesty International said that the security forces arrested four prominent political activists who had been hiding from a government manhunt, after they were involved in some of the first major marches against the government several weeks ago.

Here's James Nachtwey's Burma Aftermath

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News Update: Myanmar

Image Copyright © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
According to the Reuters, the U.N. envoy met with Myanmar junta chief Than Shwe and detained opposition Aung San Suu Kyi today, hoping to halt a bloody crackdown on the biggest democracy protests in 20 years.

Although the streets of Rangoon are quiet, it's reported that raids on homes by pro-junta gangs are being carried out looking for dissident monks and civilians. The number of dead is unknown but is estimated at much higher than the figure reported by the government.

It is also reported that about 4,000 monks have been rounded up in Rangoon over the past week and are being held at a disused race course and a technical college, and would soon be sent to prisons in the far north of the country. Sources say that the monks have been disrobed and shackled, and that they are refusing to eat.

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News Update: Myanmar (Burma)

The images from Burma of a Japanese journalists as he lay dying after soldiers opened fire on thousands of anti-government protesters have shocked the international community. The above photograph shows Kenji Nagai held his camera above his head to continue taking photos even as a soldier pointed a gun at his chest. He was one of at least nine people who were killed when troops opened fire after ordering the protesters to move on. Another 11 were reported injured.

The military regime is clamping down on the protestors, has shuttered down most monasteries with barbed wire preventing monks from leaving and have significantly curtailed internet acces and communications.

AP reports: "Soldiers clubbed activists in the streets and fired warning shots Friday, moving decisively to break up demonstrations in Myanmar before they could gain momentum. Troops occupied Buddhist monasteries and cut public Internet access, raising concerns that the crackdown on civilians that has killed at least 10 people was set to intensify."

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NY Times: Myanmar (Burma) Unrest

The NY Times has published a slideshow depicting the latest photographs of the unrest in Rangoon. The photographs are by various news agencies, and not attributed to specific photographers.

The government's security forces cracked down today on nationwide protests, firing shots and tear gas, and raiding at least two Buddhist monasteries, where they beat and arrested dozens of monks. A monk at the Ngwe Kyar Yan monastery, pointing to bloodstains on the concrete floor, said a number of monks were beaten and at least 70 of its 150 monks taken away in vehicles.

The government told Japan’s Embassy in Rangoon that a Japanese national was killed, and reports indicate that he appeared to be a photographer.

To me, the above photograph (Reuteurs) in the slideshow is representative of the current situation...a monk defying the security forces. It's not really iconic but is a photograph that tells the story in its simplicity. However, it's cropped...the horizontal version (at least part of it) is here

It appears that tourist visas are still issued by some embassies of Myanmar...but at a slower pace and with greater scrutiny, while some photojournalists and journalists do not seem to have been given visas.

The whole slideshow is here: Burma's Unrest (Registration may be required)

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Washington Post: Myanmar

Image Copyright © AFP/Getty-All Rights Reserved
Here's a slideshow of recent photographs of the current events in Myanmar as published by the Washington Post. In this photograph a monk uses a large megaphone to speak to the crowd gathered in Yangon on Sept. 25. At first the monks simply prayed and chanted "democracy, democracy." As the public joined, demonstrators demanded dialogue between the government and opposition parties, freedom for political prisoners, and adequate food, shelter and clothing.

The Washington Post's Burmese Protestors Defiant (Registration may be required).

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