A Decision to Document
As news has streamed in from Myanmar, informing us in real time as to what is taking place across the country, greater attention has come to be paid on those getting these stories out, often at great personal risk to themselves, simply to ensure that the truth is known. One of these figures is an award-winning photojournalist from the New York Times, who goes by the pseudonym “Moe” in this interview. A history of documenting the jade camps in Kachin State, the Rohingya tents in Rakhine, and following Aung San Suu Kyi’s 2015 election campaign, among other projects, Moe was well-situated to take on what would be the most difficult task of his career: putting his talents to the documentation of events happening in his own neighborhood and community. His work would speak for itself, and he went on to win some of the most prestigious photojournalism awards in the world. This interview with Insight Myanmar Podcast represents the first time since the coup he’s sat for an interview. In the remarkable passage below, he describes the internal mental process he went through in deciding to take on what he knew would be a monumental, yet essential, task of recording the daily developments, events… and tragedies.
“We all have many different roles to play in this whole thing. And for me, my role is just to document what happens next.”
Host: In your previous work, you were going to places like the jade mines in Kachin State, and the Rohingya camps and other places where there are some really bad things happening in society, to disadvantaged, vulnerable peoples, that you were there trying to document and to bring back not only to the world, but to your own people back in the cities, and to Bamar society, as you’ve said. Yet now you find yourself in a place where your own society, your country, your community, everything is unraveling month by month, day by day, and you're documenting it as a photojournalist. So what was that experience like to be so close and personal; to not be an outsider within someone else's situation, but actually, to be a documenter as well as a participant in your own society starting to come apart?
Moe: I mean, on the first day, I was busy trying to… well, it was all very confusing. But at the same time, I had to deliver my pictures, I have to do my work and I wasn't sure how safe it is to work as a journalist. But I didn't have so much time to think.
Then on the second day, I remember people started making the metal noise campaign, like hitting pots and pans to make a metal noise in the evening. And this was when I felt like, okay, it's really amazing to hear people do that, and to witness this. I felt like I wanted to join and participate as well.
But at the same time, that's when I had to ask myself like, ‘Okay, what do I do? Do I want to be a journalist or photographer who documents this? Or do I want to be involved personally?’ That's why I had to draw the line and then made a decision to be objective and neutral. Especially in a story like this, it's really important that I just do my job, because I believe that we all have many different roles to play in this whole thing. And for me, my role is just to document what happens next. And to do that safely, I need to be ethically, very careful, with the lines that I might be crossing, so I just decided to document that.
For example, the first couple of weeks of the protests almost felt like celebrations rather than protests, because there's just so many different groups of people coming together. For me, I had a lot of mixed feelings as well. I would admit very often I felt the temptation to join. But then, at the same time, I couldn't do that when I'm working for a big news organization, and when I want to be a journalist.
It was quite tough. But then I got used to it. As the story gets complicated when the crackdowns started, there was more important things happening. And I realized that for me, it's more important to keep photographing what happens."