Charles Pertwee: The Khumbu

Photo © Charles Pertwee-All Rights Reserved

Charles Pertwee is a photojournalist, known for his reportage in crisis stricken locations such as Banda Aceh and Afghanistan. He graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London with a degree in the History of East Asia, and took up photography soon after graduation. He has since worked for such diverse clients as The New York Times, Wired, CNN Traveller, Marie Claire, Universal Music and Nike. He's currently based in Nantes, France after living in Singapore. 

His galleries are all worthy of praise, but the two that appealed to me the most are of his work of The Khumbu (in black & white) and of Myanmar (Burma).

The Khumbu is located in northeastern Nepal, and the famous Tengboche Buddhist monastery is there. Tengboche is the largest gompa of the region.

Human Rights Watch: Burma Defenders

The Human Rights Watch feature Burma Defenders is timed to coincide with the first elections to be held in the repressed country in more than 20 years. Burma has been run by a junta of army generals who have silenced any opposition to their brutal regime with human rights abuses and by silencing any dissent.

Political observers are awaiting the elections and wondering if civil unrest flare up after what is widely perceived as a sham election on November 7, and whether Burma's pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, be released when her sentence ends on November 13.

Human Rights Watch and photographer Platon have teamed up to photograph opposition members, former political prisoners, and journalists who have sought political refuge in neighboring Thailand.

Platon is a photographer who attended London's St. Martin's School of Art, holds a BA in Graphic Design and a MA in Photography and Fine Art from the Royal College of Art. Now living in New York, he continues to shoot portrait, and documentary work for a range of international publications, including The New Yorker, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, GQ, and The Sunday Times Magazine.

Andrea Johnson: Burma

Andrea Johnson is a photojournalist specializing in documenting the wine and spirits, food, and travel industries. Her photographs regularly appear in related publications such as Wine Spectator, Food and Wine, VIA, Northwest Palate, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Additionally, Andrea has photographed three books: Passion for Pinot (Ten Speed Press, 2008), Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest, (Workman Press, 2010), and Luscious – 100 recipes and Insider Stories from Oregon Fruit Growers, Artisans, and Chefs (Arnica, 2011).

Take a look at her photographs of Burma in the above movie, which she made in February 2010. The fabulous Shwedagon Pagoda, the famed fishermen of Inle Lake, the monasteries with the Buddhist novices and nunneries with the pink-clad nuns, the Shin Laung initiates having their heads shaved, and the ageless U-Bein bridge are all captured by Andrea's lenses....and naturally, the Burmese smiling faces with thanaka paste.

I would have used a different transition between the photographs...I found the zoom-in too distractingly repetitive. The simple (and most common) cut transition is always the best, as it's the way we "see".

Jørgen Johanson: Kham & Amdo (Tibet)

Photo © Jørgen Johanson -All Rights Reserved
Jørgen Johanson went on his first trip to Asia in 1982, and completed the Annapurna circuit in Nepal. He was hooked from that moment on travel, photography and on Asian cultures.

He's a software development engineer for companies Norwegian companies, and recently took a 2-3 years sabbatical just to travel. Most of his travel has been trips to Asia, but also made some trips to Africa, where he photographed in Ethiopia and Niger. He's also enamored of India and China...but it's the Tibetan culture and the Himalayas that really fascinate him.

Take a look at Jørgen's Kham & Amdo photo galleries (he's got two on his website), and explore the other galleries which include Myanmar (some good shots of the fishermen of Lake Inle) and Bhutan (stop by the lovely photograph of Wangdi Phodrang Dzong in the mist).

Jørgen also self-published a book "Kham And Amdo" which is available on Blurb, which you can preview in its entirety.

Andrea Pistolesi: The Rohingya Refugees

Photo © Andrea Pistolesi-All Rights Reserved
Andrea Pistolesi is a pro in the full meaning of the word...a my kind of guy...a photographer who fuses travel and editorial imagery, and who's candid enough to say that professional travel photography as it existed is now extinct, and that travel publications and ancillary glossies are a dying breed. He espouses the view -like I do- that interesting visual stories are all around us, but that we need to broaden our scope by creating new ways of distribution (think of the new VII Magazine, as an example).

Andrea was born and lives in Florence, and studied geography at the local university, evolving in a travel photographer specializing in geographic and global social reportage. He published books on exotic destinations (Indonesia, New Zealand, Morocco, South Africa, The Land of Buddha, Hinduism, Eastern Christianity), and amongst others, has recently published a book on prayers of major religions.

He was widely published in CN Traveller (Italy), Delta Sky, Departures, Elle, l'Espresso, Figaro Mag, Gente Viaggi, Geo, Gulliver, Hemispheres, Islands, LATimes Mag, National Geographic, NYT Sophisticated Traveler, Photo, Rutas del Mundo, Smithsonian Mag, Time, Travel & Leisure, and many others.

Andrea's website is a cornucopia of travel and editorial photography, which is bound to give viewers hours of enjoyment, and provide photographers immense inspiration and ideas.

I spent a while on his website, trying to decide which of his galleries to feature on this blog. It was difficult, and I changed my mind often. Finally, I chose the brilliant reportage of the Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh.

As Andrea describes them, the Rohingya are the unwanted of southwestern Asia. An ethnic Muslim minority, they have no rights in Burma and try to flee across the borders with Bangladesh where only a few earn a refugee status. For others, it's a life of squalid illegal camps, an unending odyssey falling prey to human traffickers, to organ traffickers, to sex rings and to pedophiles.

Also read Andrea's blog post Requiem For Travel Photography. And don't miss his work on the Nats (spirits of Mynamar) and on the Bugis Seafarers.

Highly recommended as a photographer to follow.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.