MYANMAR
Work Series / 2012
Myanmar

All pictures were exposed on film using two Leica M6

Shortly after the opening of Myanmar,  50 years since the military coup and a closed, rigidly governed military dictatorship, I traveled through the country for six weeks and was one of the early tourists when the country «officialy» opened up for westerners. The clash I experienced was a civilizational one, with people living or having lived according to different cirucumstances. It reminded me of the statements of former Soviet citizens who had known and seen nothing other than dictatorship. Samuel P. Huntington has articulated this very decisively. However, in the case of Myanmar, the prehistory of the state, including over a hundred years of colonization and exploitation by the British, is seared into memory and behavior. 

           
My journeys were offering me a nuanced perspective on the interplay of history, culture, and individual experience in shaping societal norms and values.

The following collection of images provides a small insight into a formerly closed society and only a small part of a huge country that, even today in 2026, is governed by the military and plagued by civil wars.