Episode #188: Picturing a Revolution
“As a photographer or artist, whether you're in Myanmar or outside, sometimes we have society pressure to produce a work, or we have to do a revolutionary project” Min Ma Naing explains. “But sometimes, your emotional and mental health makes you take a break. For me, being alive is also very revolutionary! [The military] wants us to fall down, but we live! So being alive is revolutionary work.”
Min Ma Naing’s journey through art and advocacy took an unusual trajectory. Some years ago, she received a scholarship to study in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, it was conditional on her studying education and management, two subjects she wasn't particularly interested in, so while she accepted the scholarship, her academic work was somewhat of a burden. She found some relief by spending time in a nearby park, a quite enjoyable pastime for her since back in Myanmar, it was considered taboo for a single woman to be alone on a bench. Out of politeness, she would smile at passersby. However, that gesture became misinterpreted by more than a few men, who assumed that she was a sex worker making advances. So to discourage that assumption, Min Ma Naing started carrying a camera with her to the park, pretending to be a tourist. Serendipitously, she discovered a love of photography. After her studies, she returned to Myanmar, where she continued to nurture her newfound hobby.
When Muslim-Buddhist riots exploded in Meiktila in 2013, she watched with a heavy heart as she had spent some time living and working there before as a teacher trainer, and she wondered if she couldn’t, perhaps, tell an alternative story to what she saw on the news every day. She wanted to relate the reality that she had witnessed during her time there, of how these diverse ethnicities had actually been living largely in harmony, a contrast to the animosity that media was portraying.
After completing a crash course in international reporting, she went to Meiktila to start her work. But it was not easy: she remembers one incident when, after taking photos of a damaged mosque, several Buddhist men began threatening and even pushing her, demanding she delete the memory card. Yet there was something about that experience that made her want to keep at it. “This kind of thing makes my blood boil! I am happy teaching, but I didn't get this sense of [passion]. I didn't get like this kind of thing in my life [before]!”
So she enrolled in a longer course in media training, and when that was finished, returned to Meiktila to apply her new skills. In particular she was hoping to find positive aspects about the relations between diverse religious groups, finding those places of convergence where conflict didn’t occur, as by that point the town’s name had become synonymous with inter-religious strife. “The more we know about the positivity [of a situation, the more] we can connect to that community,” she explains. “[The people in Meiktila] have scars, but for a long history, they lived together! A beautiful bond is still happening, and I witnessed it and experienced it.”
Her first full-time job in photography was with The Myanmar Times. Min Ma Naing explains that while most people believe that objectivity is essential in reporting and newsrooms, she found that in practice, personal perspectives in fact shape how different journalists report stories. The job also opened her eyes to the uglier realities that her country was going through even during the transition period; for example, she covered the copper mine protests, and even visited a Rohingya resettlement camp. There, she had the idea to highlight individual stories of the refugees, and then follow up with them several months later. But the newsroom felt the coverage should stay with presenting a general image of their suffering, which Min Ma Naing feared stripped them of their humanity by reducing them to victims. And as in Meiktila, she wanted to find positive components of stories in contrast to the newsroom’s focus on the negative.
However, as much as she was enjoying her new passion, gender discrimination challenged her path. First there were her parents, who didn’t feel that photography was a proper profession for a woman. Then there was the choice of assignments, as the editors were often reluctant to send female reporters to conflict zones. Consequently, she decided to become a documentary photographer.
In addition to sidestepping the challenges of being a female news photographer in Myanmar, she also realized that her vision of storytelling was more aligned with a slower, community-focused approach that involved building trust over time, than reporting on the most breaking stories. “So that's part of the reason I quit the job, and mostly focus on personal, long-term documentaries,” she says, “and when I say personal, it’s because like some of the drive to cover these stories came from my personal love and hatred.”
With this aspiration in mind, she created Sorry Not Sorry, a reflection on a failed relationship. However, it was not well-received, because the prevailing theme at that time in the Yangon art world was, in her words, “the Burmese woman’s gaze on the white man,” which her recent work didn’t fit with. In other words, she realized that producing personal work that resonated with her but didn’t fit existing tastes would generate little interest. “Sometimes I got a chance to tell what I wanted to tell, but they're not interested in it, if I'm not in the trend. But at least I can be true to myself.”
Min Ma Naing also spent extended time living in Bangladesh. Despite the different faiths in the two countries (Muslim versus Buddhist), she found a similarity in the way religious extremists reinforce patriarchal structures. While she made a few friendships, she still very much felt like an outsider there. So when she ended up serendipitously meeting some Somali exiles on one of her many trips to immigration office, she realized they both shared the experience of being outsiders, yet despite facing alienation and isolation, were trying to make a home and find a community in a new place. This led to a project she called “Jigsaw,” which shared many diverse, individual stories of displacement.
Subsequent narratives emerged, spanning a spectrum of subjects that she turned into new projects. One was the documentation of life in a nunnery where ethnically diverse, young girls had escaped from conflict-ridden areas and were being cared for by senior nuns. Another delved into the harrowing realm of human trafficking, unearthing a disturbing trade where adolescent girls were abducted from northern Myanmar and transported to China. Min Ma Naing also spearheaded the creation of a collective that was dedicated to empowering female photographers, an alliance that provided mutual support within a profession marred by gender bias. It also dared to challenge the relentless demands of the news cycle, which perpetually thirsted for prominent headlines; in contrast, this endeavor explored slower-paced narratives, amplifying the resonance of local voices and shining a light on individual sagas that often remain overlooked in typical reporting.
As difficult as the stories were which she tried to tell before through her art and journalism career, nothing hit as hard as when the military initiated the coup in February, 2021. The protest movement provided her with a platform to combine her honed, technical skills with her evolving belief system. Despite the jubilant atmosphere of early protests that hit the streets soon after, Min Ma Naing chose to convey a sense of underlying tension, that foretold an impending violence she felt was inevitable. It also required her to navigate safety concerns with unparalleled caution. She made the strategic decision to employ film photography over digital, which also protected the identities of any individuals she captured on the streets. As a further security consideration, she undertook the meticulous task of developing the film herself, away from prying eyes. She also made the artistic decision to use a “double exposure” technique, which effectively renders figures unidentifiable, thus helping ensure their anonymity. Interestingly, it occurred to her that, symbolically, the complexity of the double exposure process mirrors the complexity of the country’s political situation. She explains it this way: “It [reflected] how complex the political landscape was at the time. The chemical reaction in… the film developing [aligned] with my storytelling.”
For Min Ma Naing, it was important not to cover the developing resistance movement in a way that fit within the prevailing trends—which focused on the bigger protest sites and well-known figures—but rather to explore the individual experiences of ordinary people. After all, she figured, this was a people’s revolution, so it was their story to tell. So Min Ma Naing sought out a diverse array of voices, from factory workers to elderly citizens with their experience of revolutions past, and from Gen Z activists to members of ethnic communities. Linked by their opposition to the coup, each voice contributed to the larger tapestry of the revolution. To facilitate more comfortable sharing, she ditched her pre-planned questions, and undertook a normal conversation with the subjects, allowing a deeper insight into their motivations and background than the exigencies of the commercial news media allow. In her mind, the fact the conventional news media didn’t make room for nuance ultimately inhibited a deeper understanding into the very events they were trying to describe.
But Min Ma Maing isn’t just a storyteller documenting the coup. Like everyone in the country, she is a participant, too. Her life has been thrown into upheaval by the coup, and she has been forced to protect her own identity; in fact, “Min Ma Naing” is not her real name. It is a nom du guerre, which means, “The King Cannot Beat You,” implying that the people will eventually defeat the dictator.
And she had some close calls. During one crackdown, she and several colleagues took shelter in the nearby apartment of a Hindu family. Realizing the importance of blending in, she asked them to put a bindi on her forehead, hid her camera, and donned Indian dress. When the police soon stormed in looking for her, the family spoke to her in Hindi as if she was household help. A pregnant family member had the idea to feign sickness, which caused a flurry and signaled Min Ma Naing to use the disruption to leave the room, and so she quickly retreated to the kitchen. But even though the police knew who lived in the house, they fell for the family’s ruse that she was just a maid. The police eventually ended up finding and arresting everyone else who had been in that group with Min Ma Naing… except her. Devastatingly, her peers were taken to one of the more brutal interrogation centers, and many of them haven’t been heard from since.
Still, she began to realize that her luck would eventually run out, and it was not unlikely that the military would actually be looking for her, specifically. After all, her work as an artist had landed her under the Special Branch’s scrutiny back in 2014. So she came to the unfortunate conclusion that, for safety’s sake, she needed to leave the country. She looked for a way out of the country; one possibility was applying to Cornell’s Artist-at-Risk program, which would pay for her ticket. To her surprise, she was accepted, but the decision was still very hard to make: her sister had been imprisoned by the junta, and she also couldn’t bear to leave her parents behind. However, her mom insisted, and finally, Min Ma Naing fled her homeland.
Naively thinking her time in exile would only be the better part of a year, she now realizes that it will probably last indefinitely. She’s also mired in guilt, at having left her family, having evaded arrest when so many couldn’t, and having taken advantage of the opportunity to reach safety abroad. For once, art wasn’t an escape, as the ability to channel her feelings creatively only served to remind her of her privilege. This led to an existential question of identity, heightening her sense of displacement and leading to a deeper depression.
Eventually connecting with a therapist, it was suggested she work on a visual diary, since formal art was no longer outlet for her. This allowed her to document her daily life and surroundings, and was also an exercise in capturing moments without the pressure of producing a larger project. Once she began registering her emotions in this journal, she became aware of how deeply she longed to return to Myanmar and reconnect with her community there. These visual diaries were then refashioned into handmade books, which combined photos from her time in the US and Myanmar, allowing a fusion of memories to bind these two faraway places. This helped to bridge the painful gap between the two places, and contributed to her healing process.
Min Ma Naing continues today to give a voice to her country’s vulnerable population who are struggling to be heard. Yet, she notes, “I don't like the term like a voiceless. We were not able to hear it, but they have their voice, and we [just] fail to hear it. Being ‘voiceless’ and ‘giving the voiceless,’ this gives the hierarchy to the journalist and photographer, so it's a power dynamic… Storytelling is not one person’s job, but it is all people coming together: me and the people in the story, together. If we come with the assumption that we are telling their voice, and we are telling the story, it’s wrong for me.”