Burma: Thought under Military Control

Monks protest in London during Global day of action for Burma – see My London Diary. (C) 2007, Peter Marshall

MOIS DE LA PHOTO-OFF, PARIS
Birmanie, rêves sous surveillance
(Burma, Dreams under Surveillance)
Du 10 au 23 novembre 2008 aux Vôutes

The web site Burma, dreams under surveillance gives an excellent account of this project started in 2003 by the humanitarian organisation ‘Les yeux dans le monde’ to increase our awareness of the social and political situation in Burma.

On 13 November we went to the opening of a show of the photographs taken by Manon Ott and Grégory Cohen at Les Vôutes, vaults under the roadway at les Frigos, a former industrial complex now artists homes, studios and exhibition spaces, a block east of the new building of the National Library (Bibliotheque François Mitterand) in the XIIIe.

The work is also available as a book from Editions Autrement, published in May 2008, when the work was also shown at Les Vôutes with a two-day festival.  The photographs are presented in four chapters: People’s desire, Stories of resistance, Between survival and guerilla war and The border areas, and also includes appendices containing information about the country and its culture.

Although there were some powerful images on the wall, and in the projection on the screen at the end of the cellar, the added structure of the book gives a much tighter experience.

There were a number of images among the work that to me seemed perhaps more touristic than documentary, and at times I wondered about how the work had been affected by the difficulties of working openly in Burma, impossible for me to assess.

But there were also moving stories and powerful suggestions of a pervasive military supervision of all aspects of life (the mention of Orwell’s 1984 seemed only too true.) But there was also humour – and if you don’t know about the Moustache Brothers you can find out here and also see them on YouTube.

Burma Peace walk in London,  Jan 2008 – Protests like this would be brutally repressed in Burma. (C) 2008, Peter Marshall