Travel And Tourism Trends: Burma

Showing posts with label Burma. Show all posts

Wayne Thomas | Myanmar (on Storehouse)

I'm a great fan of Storehouse, a visual storytelling application for the iPad, which is an easy way to create, share, and discover beautiful stories by combining photographs, videos clips, and text. In fact, I've produced two stories on Storehouse so far, and the number of views on one of them just blew my mind...over 5500 views in a matter of a few weeks.

And I'm glad to see that other photographers have preceded me, and have followed suit. One of these photographers is Wayne Thomas, whose Myanmar, A Nation in Transition has just been published a few days ago. I hope this post will propel his multimedia essay's readership/viewership even further.

It's a great combination of still photographs, short video clips (about 5 of them that loop continuously) and a couple of panoramic photographs of Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda and of the Kyaiktiyo Pagoda's Golden Rock.

The most arresting photograph in the essay is Wayne's photograph of a woman whose face is completely covered in thick thanakha paste, and some sort of brown-black "third eye" in the center of her forehead. I've never seen anyone with that much thanakha paste before.

Wayne Thomas describes himself as a traveler, storyteller and a grower of facial hair. He traveled to Myanmar and writes that it's a developing country sought after by opportunity seeking corporations and travelers hoping to step back in time.

He's right.

Konstantino Hatzisarros | Burma

Ah...Burma (or Myanmar!) It's on the mind of many travel photographers...on their itinerary, or their bucket list...some describe it as a fusion of South and East Asia influences, whether cultural, culinary or physical characteristics.

International tourism to Myanmar is mushrooming to unseen parallels after being virtually closed off to the rest of the world for almost 60 years. It moved from a military to a more democratic government, and the influx of tourism has increased from 300,000 visitors in 2010 to about a million last year, with 7,000,000 tourists forecast to visit the country by 2020.

I was fortunate to photograph in Myanmar in 2001 and 2002...when few tourists ventured to these magnificent country; at a time when the choice in hotels was limited and the dial-up internet was almost non-existent.

New York-based Konstantino Hatzisarros brings us his large sized photographs of his travels to Myanmar, including a few of the Chin minorities. While the practice of facial tattooing has largely ceased years ago, some Chin women can still be found bearing these, as it was a rite of passage for them as youngsters. However, the new generation are shunning the practice.

The ritual was officially banned by the then socialist regime in the 1960s, and the tattoos became increasingly rare as Christian missionaries converted the previously animist communities.

Berta upe Tilmantaitė | Myanmar

Viewing Vimeo's Staff Pick "A Handful of Myanmar" made me realize that it had been quite a while since I posted photographs or video of this wonderful country.

Myanmar is currently one of the hottest travel destinations. Tour groups, solo tourists, travel photographers are flocking to this wonderful Asian nation, and its hotels are virtually overbooked. Some may say that this influx of tourism (mostly Western), which increased almost 90% over the past 3 years, will eventually be detrimental to its culture, character and personality. Despite the recent cancellation of large tour groups from the US, the UK, Australia and France, Myanmar is planning for a significant tourist influx in the coming couple of years.

A far cry from when I visited in 2001 and 2002, when tourists were few...partly put off by the country's poor infrastructure and by the notion that tourism helped to retain the military junta in power.

Berta upe Tilmantaite is a Lithuanian multimedia journalist, photographer and story teller, currently based in Vilnius. She obtained her MA in International Multimedia Journalism from the University of Bolton / Beijing Foreign Studies University (Beijing) after graduating from Vilnius University.

I am featuring her work from Myanmar here, but also explore her other galleries of the Himalaya region, Tibet, Indonesia, Borneo, Mongolia, Thailand, Georgia and Portugal. Her video titled A Handful of Myanmar was a Vimeo Staff Pick.

Sofie Olsen | The Moken People

The Moken are an ethnic group of about 2,000 to 3,000 members who live on the coast and islands in the Andaman Sea, on the west coast of Thailand, and the Mergui Archipelago of Burma. In Thailand, they're called Chao Ley (people of the sea) or Chao nam (people of the water). They're also called Sea Gypsies; a generic term that applies to a number of peoples in southeast Asia.

Some of the Burmese Moken are still nomadic people who roam the sea most of their lives in small hand-crafted wooden boats, however much of their traditional life, built on the premise of life as outsiders, is under threat and appears to be diminishing.

The Norwegian photographer Sofie Olsen travelled to the Surin Islands in the Andaman Sea, located 55 km from the Thai mainland to document the Moken people’s way of life and on-going aquatic-based culture.

Ms Olsen attended the International Center of Photography in New York City, where she graduated in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism in June 2011. Following her graduation Olsen was awarded the Center’s prestigious ICP Directors Fellowship. She won the London Festival of Photography Prize in 2012 with her photo-film I Am Light, which features an artist living in an alternative encampment in Norway together with Roma Gypsies.

Jodi Champagne | Myanmar Monks & Nuns

I noticed that I hadn't posted the work of a woman photographer since June 11...a rather long and unusual interval for The Travel Photographer blog.

So to redress this accidental slipup, I feature Myanmar Monks & Nuns, a gallery of 29 large photographs by Jodi Champagne. With a couple of exceptions, these are in color and are carefully posed. Although the colors are lovely, my favorite is the one above of a Burmese nun in black & white.

Additionally, you shouldn't miss Jodi's photo gallery Choices They Make documenting a Shinbyu ceremony which marks the ordination of young boys as novice monks, as well as girls as nuns.

Her website also has galleries of Cuban streets, of the Karen Padaung women, and other documentary work.

Jodi Champagne is a photographer based in California, and has worked as a portrait, wedding, family and sports photographer and quickly discovered her true passion was in documentary and street photography. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. Her photographs have been widely published in books, magazines, and used for editorial and commercial work. She received the Worldwide Gala Street Photography and the NYCFA Portrait Awards in 2012.

POV: The Inle Lake Fishermen Are So Tired!

I traveled to Myanmar (Burma) twice in 2001 and 2002. At that time, it was still very much "off the grid of mass tourism", and few tourists could be seen...either put off by the comparatively onerous entry requirements (and restrictive travel itineraries) or by their unwillingness to support the military junta, directly or indirectly. When I was in this lovely country, there was no internet as such (just a few approved businesses had it), no mobile telephony...but few cared. Burma and its people more than made up for these little inconveniences.

Recently the country has opened up and changed in many ways. Aung San Suu Ky was released from her house confinement, and her party won most of the seats in the lower parliament. Tourists are flocking in to the country as if these's no tomorrow...hotels are overbooked...flights are full and groups of Western and Asian tourists are spending time and hard currency to the benefit of the local Burmese.

This opening up has generated a lot of travel images by photographers...either on professional websites, or on social media. However, I haven't seen much of new approaches or fresh angles.

The photograph (above) of the Inle Lake fisherman I made in 2001 was from a pre-arranged photo shoot during which a few local fishermen would oar their boats not far from the hotel, and I'd photograph them from another rowing boat in the middle of the lake.

Most of what I see nowadays are photographs of for-hire fishermen photographed near the hotels' wharfs where the water is placid and calm...ideal for reflections and other cute stuff.

C'mon photographers...you can do better than that now. Photographs of the for hire fishermen of Inle Lake are a dime a dozen....and they all look alike. Who will buy them? Think of something else...another venue...go to the fishermen villages...produce a photo essay or an audio slideshow of their lives...be inventive and creative.

I've photographed the Inle Lake fishermen at dusk 12 years ago...12 years ago, and you're still photographing the same stuff?

You want ideas? Look at Sim Chi Yin's The Water Seller and Anthony Pond's The Ring Train of Yangon.

Sim Chi Yin | The Water Seller

Here's an excellent photo story of a water seller in Myanmar by Singaporean photojournalist Sim Chi Yin. The young water seller's name is Chit Min Oo and this photo feature tells us about the hard life he leads in a country just unshackling itself from the chains of military autocracy.

Chit Min Oo lives in a slum about an hour outside of downtown Yangon, in a single-room hut with his mother, two brothers and a sister. At day break, Chit Min Oo and one of his brothers Pyay Sone Aung, head out onto the train tracks, fetch their buckets, fill them with blocks of ice and water from a nearby tank and jump on the Circle Line train, which remains the cheapest mode of public transport around Yangon.

They hop on and off these trains, weaving in and out of carriages offering their cups of water for mere pennies in the equivalent Burmese currency.

I wish the photo essay was accompanied by a soundtrack...imagine viewing the photographs along with ambient sound such as the rattle of the ancient trains on the tracks, the clicking of the mugs against the buckets, the yells of the sellers, the sound of people in the stations...!

Based in Beijing, Sim Chi Yin is a member of VII Photo Agency’s Mentor Program for emerging talents and was selected for the PDN30 – Photo District News’ top 30 “emerging photographers to watch” – in 2013. She photographs regularly for the New York Times. Since going freelance in 2011, she has also photographed for Le Monde, Newsweek, TIME magazine, Vogue USA, Financial Times Weekend Magazine, New York Times Sunday Magazine and Stern.

Justin Mott | Travel

" I hate and love taking pictures of conical hats; it really depends on the day." -Justin Mott

I was challenged (well, sort of) by Justin Mott if I could tell the difference between the photographs he shot for Conde Nast Traveler and those for The New York Times. I think I could tell, but it's now up the readers of The Travel Photographer to take up the challenge.

A hint: if it looks too perfect and not too documentary-looking, then it's probably Conde Nast. In any event, you'll be certain to enjoy Justin's work which mostly spans 45 photographs of South East Asia (Viet Nam, Myanmar, Cambodia, etc) as well as Tanzania.

Justin Mott grew up in Rhode Island, and studied photojournalism at San Francisco State University but a year before graduating traveled to Southeast Asia, and eventually settled in Vietnam since 2006. He's been photographing regularly for The New York Times, among many others.

He is living in Hanoi, Vietnam and working throughout Southeast Asia on personal projects and assignments since 2006. In 2008, his work on Agent Orange Orphans was recognized in the PDN Annual and was awarded in the Marty Forscher Fellowship for humanistic photography given out by the Parsons School of Design in NYC. Justin is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and various other international publications such as Time, Newsweek, Business Week, Geo, L’Express, GEO, Bloomberg News Service, The Independent, UNESCO, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and the Discovery Channel. He won The Marty Forscher Fellowship Humanistic Photography Award.

Maarten Boerma | Myanmar

While viewing Maarten Boerma's galleries, I was reminded of wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic concept that is centered on the acceptance of imperfection. It is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". Not because of his images, but because he's starts off his artist statement by saying "I love beautiful photos, but they should not be all beauty, a little bit of decay, error, rough edges should be part of it."

Maarten's galleries span the globe, and he photographed in Myanmar, Spain, Bangkok, France, New York City, Bhutan, Morocco and his native Netherlands where he works as an IBM Cloud Sales Leader.

I chose to feature his Myanmar gallery because of this wonderful atmospheric photograph, in which the carefully positioned red Burmese umbrella gives the right amount of color to the otherwise monochromatic scene. It's one of his best work, and 46 photographs ought to please anyone interested in Myanmar...street photography, balloons over Bagan, monks and novices...it's all there. Some are candid and impromptu, while others are not.

Most of his photographs are made with a Leica M8 or M9, with a variety of lenses.

João Almeida | Myanmar

João Almeida appeared on my radar screen when he and Ruben Vicente held their Myanmar photo exhibition in Lisbon in July last year.

And since Myanmar is hot these days for being a prime destination for travelers, I thought I'd feature João Almeida's work which includes people photography and landscapes made in Myanmar, as well as Vietnam, Portugal, Italy, Morocco, Thailand, England, Latvia and a dozen more.

João also authored a lovely ebook titled Minglaba! of no less than 89 photographs made in Myanmar, which is available for purchase for $9.00.

His work is broader than pure travel photography, and is considered as street, documentary, landscape and nature, depending on what the location offers. João is represented by the Alamy and age fotostock agencies, and he's also one of the founding members of the Light Travelers photo collective, a joint effort to explore travel photography in it's various forms and shapes.

Short Hiatus

I thought this image of a sleeping Buddhist monk near the entrance of the Chaukhtatgyi Pagoda in Yangon is appropriate to announce I'll be taking a week's break from posting on The Travel Photographer's blog.

With over 3000 posts under my belt so far, and infrequent breaks, I guess I deserve some time off.

This slide photograph was made with a Canon 1v during a photo trip to Burma in 2001, and I added some filters to it using Exposure 4 software.

Myanmar | Patrik Wallner

Here's a extremely well filmed and intelligently produced short documentary on Myanmar by Patrik Wallner, a well known skateboard videographer, as well as a photographer, which ought to convince any remaining recalcitrant to visit this gorgeous country, and meet its lovely people, before the grip of Westernization takes hold and changes it forever.

The short movie capture beautiful scenes from the perspective of a hot air balloon, and from ground. I found the sequence with the captivating Bagan's temples to be the best.

I frequently dislike the musical soundtrack of such documentaries...sometimes added without regard to the ethnicity, culture and traditions of the country involved, however I think the soundtrack by Jean-Claude Vannier used on Myanmar is an excellent choice.

Some of Wallner's photographs of Myanmar are on this website. The Myanmar video can also be viewed on Vimeo.

Thomas Cristofoletti: Once Upon A Time In Burma

I thought I'd feature work of Myanmar (Burma) which is rapidly becoming the must-see destination in South East Asia after its 'opening' up. I'm told that tourists are descending on this lovely country like hungry locusts over Biblical Egypt, and that hotels and flights are difficult to come by.

Ah, well...I hope the benefits accruing to the touring agencies from this surge trickle down to the people of Burma.

I thought I'd feature Thomas Cristofoletti's photographs of this magnificent country, especially as they're different from the standard travel photo portfolios of posed photographs of Lake Inle fishermen or Buddhist monks in Mandalay or Bagan. His photographs are, for the most part, unposed and natural. And his website includes well composed photography of Burmese people in Yangon's streets, on the ferries, in train stations, and on Inle Lake.

Thomas Cristofoletti is an Italian freelance photographer & videographer based in Phnom Penh, who's working in several social video & photography projects in South East Asia and Europe for international NGOs. His photographs were eatured in international magazines and newspapers, such as The Herald Tribune, The Guardian.co.uk, El Pais, Afisha Mir Travel Magazine, LaRepubblica.it, In Style Russia, and others.

Cedric Arnold: Yangon Awakening

I'm really delighted to have stumbled on Newsweek's Picture Dept which features the lovely new work by Cedric Arnold in Myanmar's capital. More photographs are featured on The Daily Beast. I'm a fan of this type of photography, and of Cedric's work which I featured on this blog earlier this year.

The much better laid out gallery on Cedric Arnold's own website is titled Yangon's Awakening, and consists of large format Polaroids of an artist, a poet, a teacher, a student, an office worker, a punk rocker, a forest monk (above)... photographed in front the old and neglected walls of this city, showing the diversity of people, and juxtaposing the traditional and modern Burmese against the peeling paint and masonry of these old walls.

I chose to feature the Polaroid of this forest monk because I came across some of these monks when I walked up and down the path to Kyaiktiyo Pagoda during a photo excursion to Myanmar some 10 years ago, and I recall that they were very reserved, and shy when photographed...perhaps because they were in the midst of a pilgrimage to that sacred site.

These are real Polaroids...not Instagrams and not digital images processed with Alien Skin software and the like.

Lovely work.

Dani Planas Labad: Burma

With its governmental reforms of 2011, Myanmar (Burma) has enhanced its "go to" status amongst Western tourists much farther than what it used to be, and travel photographers are now very keen to travel to this wonderful country to document a culture before it become too influenced by Western trends.

Dani Planas Labad is a Spanish travel photographer who's traveled and photographed in Morocco, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Iceland, Burma, New York and his native Barcelona. He tells his audience that he discovered his passion for photography when he turned 30, and toured Asia for 5 months with a Nikon F80. He bought a medium format Seagull camera in a Chinese street market, and subsequently took up digital photography.

The young boy in Dani's photograph is wearing thanaka paste on his face; widely used in Myanmar for the past 2000 years, it serves as sunscreen.

Lovers of Myanmar will relish Dani's gallery with over 80 photographs of the people and landscapes of the country.

Monica Denevan: Burma

I'm glad to have found Monica Denevan's website with its gorgeous photographs of Burma and China. Trust me...you will find that her some 120 photographs are indeed luminous and gorgeous.

Monica travels with her medium format Bronica, one lens, and a bunch of plastic bags filled with Ilford Delta 400 film. She tells us that her photographs are printed from negatives in her traditional darkroom and selenium toned.

Classic photography in the full meaning of the word, and the farthest thing from the Instagram and Hipstamatic fad.

Born in San Francisco, Monica studied photography at San Francisco State University. She started visiting parts of Burma and China for many years, and always had her Bronica along. Her work was published in ZYZZYVA, Communication Arts Photo Annual, SHOTS, Black and White Magazine, The Photo Review, The Sun, and Artvas-The Photo (Korea) among others.

She is represented by Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco, Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, Capital Culture Gallery in London, and Tao Evolution Gallery in Hong Kong which produced a small catalogue of her work. Monica’s photographs are in the permanent collection of UCSF Medical Center.

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