What Double Exposure Reveals about the Resistance
Min Ma Naing, a Myanmar artist and documentary photographer, navigated personal and professional challenges in her quest for truth, which she described in a recent podcast discussion. When the military coup unfolded in 2021, she used photography to depict individual voices in the resistance, emphasizing the people’s revolution. From confronting gender discrimination to exploring diverse narratives, her work highlighted positive acts of human dignity and valor often overshadowed by media’s focus on conflict. Faced with danger, she adopted a pseudonym for safety and eventually sought exile. Grappling with guilt and an identity crisis, she sought out therapy, which led her to create visual diaries, bridging her experiences in the U.S. and Myanmar. Today, she strives to amplify the voices of Myanmar’s vulnerable populations, challenging power dynamics in storytelling.
“This revolution is people’s revolution led by people, so, I wanted to highlight different colors of ordinary people.”
Host: In your own words, describing this project of double exposure, you wrote: “Faces of Change will provide an intimate answer to that sprawling question, a subtle, human-focused portrait gallery of ordinary individuals who are participating in the revolution and strangers acting in unison, radically changing their country’s history. This gallery of ordinary people, at an extraordinary juncture in their lives, is aimed to bring a needed counterpoint perspective to the imagery of Myanmar Spring Revolution.” And as I’m reading that now one of the things that stands out to me that I wasn’t aware of are the two words “needed counterpoint.” You talk about bringing ”a needed counterpoint” to the imagery of Myanmar Spring Revolution. In having this conversation with you, up till now you’ve talked about how any story that you’re covering, you’re always looking at this other angle, this nuance that’s perhaps positive perspective, this human part of it that’s been lost. So, my question for you is, what do you feel was being lost or missed or misunderstood in the early reporting of the resistance to the coup? And how did you want your work as storytelling, again not as photojournalism because you’ve defined yourself that way, to fit into a gap of information and perspective that you felt wasn’t being properly addressed?
Min Ma Naing: So, in the early phase of revolution, a lot of coverage was on the energetic scene of the protests, and the tactics of the protests, and having profile even in the news is mostly well-known people. For example, like a woman leader of the activists, Aljazeera and the BBC included this person in their broadcasts. So, we keep hearing the same answers to the same questions in different media outlets!
But for me, the revolution is not just about politicians, it’s about ordinary people coming out together. This revolution is a people’s revolution, so, I wanted to highlight the different “colors” of ordinary people, like common factory workers, elderly people who have faced several revolutions, Gen Z and ethnic voices. Each has a unique voice, and I would like to listen to them all.
The challenge of my work is when I just asked them why they were protesting, I got a short answer. Everybody said something like, “Because we are angry, we are angry about the dictatorship!” After hearing three interviews repeating [the same answer], I didn’t know what to do. So, I asked my mentor, a writer. He said, “Why don’t you start the conversation like a slow conversation, a natural conversation like you would normally do?” So, when I took the portrait picture, I wanted to protect their identity, so I invited [subjects] to my house, which was a safe, calm space. I sat down, starting off with some everyday conversational stuff to build rapport. There was no set question, we just went with the flow. It became a human communication! Every different person has a different life experience. That experience drove them to take part in this revolution. I think sometimes in the rash nature of news we miss this kind of conversation.