Myanmar News Articles: WELL LIT.: Through a storyteller's lens

SC Shekar talks to Samantha Joseph about history, photography and the special place in his heart for Myanmar

"HAVE you heard of the Arakans?" renowned photographer SC Shekar asks me, in reply to the question "why Myanmar?" when we sit down to discuss his involvement in 7 Days in Myanmar, a gorgeous photobook that traces a visual map of the country.

"The Aga Khans?" I reply, wondering what religious rulers in the Middle East had to do with Myanmar.

"No," he laughs, before adding: "The Arakanese empire, the seat of which was Mrauk-U, perched off the Bay of Bengal. Mrauk-U used to be the seat of learning for the region, and kings from all over the world would send their emissaries and their scholars to have dialogues in Mrauk-U."

Mrauk-U, Myanmar, pronounced as a chirping meow, was a sort of Blazing World that welcomed all thinking creatures and sought to further man's knowledge in science, alchemy and spirituality. Legend has it that the king in Mrauk-U was so powerful that he had Japanese samurai warriors as his bodyguards. But Shekar assures me that it is no fairy tale and that this iteration of Mrauk-U did once exist.

While Mrauk-U still remains today as part of Rakhine State, it is a shadow of a mythical kingdom, maintaining a historical significance but little else from its glory days. Much of Myanmar suffered from the rule of the military junta, and none more so than the centres of learning and education.

Nevertheless, Shekar has a lot of faith in the Myanmarese spirit, something that drew him there and kept him coming back for more than a decade.

"That's the kind of place Myanmar used to be," he says, referring not only to Mrauk-U, but the fact that Rangoon University, as it was known way back then, was a place where Asians from all over the continent would send their peoples to be educated. "And you can't just deny that. It's in their blood, it will resurface.

CAPTURING VANISHING COMMUNITIES

Shekar's photographs of Myanmar are an ethereal visual ode to the mystic loveliness that shrouds this secretive land. Shekar himself is nonchalant about the almost-cinematic gorgeousness of the images he captures. Instead he's intensely focused on the cultural value of what he does.

"I think this whole attraction to photographing people stems from the idea of documenting communities," he says from behind his black-rimmed glasses.

Shekar has made telling the life experiences of certain communities something of a cause. Some of his previous work include Raising Land — The Way of Life Land in Sarawak, Gilding The Lily — Everyday Portraits of Malaysian Women, and Visions — A Multicultural Exploration of Malaysia and Australia, all of which seek to bring to the forefront observations that are unique yet familiar to each community.

I ask him why most of his pictures feature the old and the poor, subjects that would not be conventionally deemed beautiful. In fact, his portfolio does not have a single "beauty shot"; it is simply image after image of people, real people, in their realities.

He laughs a little self-consciously, then says: "Well, but I find these people beautiful. I like doing ethnographic portraiture, studying people in their environment.

"When you try to do ethnographic work, then you see the whole pattern, of how a whole race, a whole ethnic group, evolves," he adds.

It is an important subject for him, the need to preserve our past for our future, and he warms up to this topic.

"Documentary photography is very powerful. There's no Photoshop, no manipulation of images, it's just very raw, very telling. The whole point of photography is storytelling."

REAL LIFE PEOPLE

Shekar honed his skills as a newspaper photojournalist in the 1980s, a job he eventually left because he stopped learning.

"I think you come to a point where the technical side of photography doesn't play a part anymore in your work. It becomes second nature." Gesturing to a small Fuji X100S, hardly bigger than a digital camera, he says: "I don't carry around those big cameras anymore, or lighting. Spontaneity is extremely important, and the only way to be spontaneous is to resist the impulse to control the environment."

He tells me of the time when he was out doing the architectural shots for 7 Days in Myanmar, and how on the way back to the hotel, he was attracted to the sound of chanting.

"I heard these little children reciting from scriptures," he says, and that led him into a little Rakhine monastery in Yangon, where he discovered a tableau of young monks and an interesting story. "What was even more interesting was that they were reading from a brass plate. All their scriptures had been engraved on brass plates. I asked them why. It was because so many times in the past, entire scriptures have been destroyed in fires."

The resulting image resembles nothing so much as a painting but an Asian Vermeer with a faded background and lightly shadowed figures, almost too perfect in the natural light.

He admits that while rewarding, ethnographic portraiture can often be emotionally draining. Pulling up a black and white image on his computer screen — a woman old and wrinkled, with a wetness in her eyes, tombstones in the background — Shekar explains that she is the caretaker of the Jewish cemetery in Yangon.

"She talked about how she doesn't have enough to eat, even now that Myanmar is opening up. She lives in a house that is just a single room, and there are four of them there."

It is easy enough to become maudlin when taking photos like this, faced with circumstances you cannot change. The only way to deal with it, he says, is to give it your all. "You have to photograph with a lot of respect and empathy."

TIES WITH MYANMAR

Shekar's ties with Myanmar go back a long way. Following his involvement with 7 Days, he intends to release his own photography collection of Myanmar, 15 years in the making. "It will probably be two volumes," he says quite happily.

What will be next once he has exhausted that picturesque nation?

"Once I've finished with Myanmar, there's so much to do in Southeast Asia."

He doesn't seem to understand the meaning of taking a break, talking instead about the tin mining community in Kaki Bukit that he has been documenting for the past five years. He hopes to release a book this year with his longtime collaborator, Liew Suet Fun.

And what happens when all these communities finally disappear?

"Well, then you won't have anything. You'll only have photographs. If we don't record change, if we don't record history, we won't know who we are, or where we come from."

7 Days in Myanmar

Price: RM185
Pages: 276
Publisher: Editions Didier Millet (EDM)

HOW does one review a photo book? Does one apply the same principles of plot, character and style?

7 Days in Myanmar is undoubtedly a gorgeous book. With 30 photographers to capture the vibrancy of one country, it's difficult not to be slightly in awe of this rather large tome.

In terms of plot, 7 Days takes you from province to province, kicking it off with a bit of a history lesson. Black-and-white and sepia – tinted photos provide an insight into 19th century Myanmar, along with a historical backstory. It then

progresses to an overview of Myanmar, which I found very interesting, as my knowledge mostly consisted of "military junta" and "lots of temples".

After laying the groundwork, 7 Days unleashes images of current-day Myanmar, beginning with Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw, and going on to explore the central area, the hills and the coast.

The main protagonist is of course the country of Myanmar, and the book successfully raises it from a one-dimensional nation, too often confused for its neighbours Cambodia and Vietnam (in my case anyway), to having an identity of its own.

While architecture, landscapes, and flora and fauna have their moments in the spotlight in 7 Days, the main attraction here are the people.

People harvesting rice, riding on motorcycles, sleeping on ferries, laughing, getting married and rolling cheroots fill the pages with an animation that I hadn't expected from a coffee table book. You can actually feel the hustle and sweat of people thronging a street in one image, and the loneliness of a fisherman sitting on a vast lake on the next page.

The images of dawn, temples, giant sculpted figures and synagogues have a stillness about them in contrast, forcing you to stop and look at it instead of simply glancing through.

So is 7 Days a good book? It's certainly beautiful and sensitive, and that makes it worth picking up.