Social : BURMESE FROM MYANMAR

(sample of 16 pictures, out of approximately 40)

Through the international media, the world often sees Burma only in extreme circumstances, such as monks rising against an authoritative government or in devastating natural disasters. Of course censure in this barely accessible country is contributing largely to the specific and excessive media coverage of extreme events. At the tourist level a limited visa to 28 days as well as difficult climatic, transport, and accomodation conditions are limiting the traveller to a superficial appreciation of the Burmese life conditions. So this photographic project finds its origin in a simple statement of fact :

Western countries do not know Burma and Burmeses.

What about this population of fifty million Burmeses, of their lifestyles, their fears, their aspirations ? But particularly what must these people face in their daily life, and how do they manage it with such a system which has lasted nearly 50 years? ... This social and political oppression is curiously difficult to define and feel for non-Burmese people. It should of course be considered that foreigner journalists as much as tourists are travelling in Burma only in 'permitted areas' (about half the country). But even in those permitted areas, one cannot see a police officer or a soldier at each street corner, one cannot see people dying all around, one cannot see real daily authority repressions or demonstrations... In brief, we are officially in a dictatorship and even if the brightest expression of this lies in the speech and the suffering of the Burmeses themselves, the visual symptoms of this dictatorship remain almost invisible to the foreigner's glance. But those visual symptoms do exist. They just are not so obvious. If you want to see them it is required to stop and observe. To question yourself so as to question better the others. And to listen to the walls. So then all these symptoms will slowly reveal the latent character of this disease which has gently corroded the Burmeses in their daily lives for such a long time, frustrating their blooming and opening desires, and exerting on them an insidious, but real pressure. That explains somehow too the strength of the protest movements which Burma knew in Sept. 2007 (and especially in 1988). 'It is a water which explodes because it cannot boil more'.

Obviously, resistance is present. A resistance made in the image of the exerted pressures : moral, subtle, discrete. From Buddhist teachings to the artistic expression (so controlled can it be), allegory, poetry, irony and humour are the Burmeses' weapons to defend themselves, to express their resistance, at least among themselves. Its expression has no limit.