Burmese Refugee Photos Win Acclaim in Art World
By Jill Oestreicher Gross
WASHINGTON (Reuters-06-02-02) - Chan Chao left his native Burma when he was 12 and didn't look back for nearly two decades. When he finally did, as a photographer, it was through the lens of a Fuji camera that locked eyes with the struggling people of his homeland, officially known as Myanmar. He returned again and again and the images he captured eventually catapulted Chao onto the international art scene.
On Thursday, 11 photographs from his trips to refugee camps at the borders of the southeast Asian nation go on display at the Whitney Museum's 2002 Biennial, one of the most important exhibitions for modern artists in the United States.
Chao's photos are humanistic portraits of student activists and ethnic rebels who, after being pushed to Myanmar's borders and are living in camps, are united by a desire to see their country, run by a military junta, turn to democracy.
"As portraits of people they are incredibly engaging," said Lawrence Rinder, the Biennial's chief curator. "The characters that one sees ... and the way that they engage with the camera, and therefore with the person looking at the pictures, is very direct and unabashed and unguarded in a way that one rarely finds in pictures, even in portraits." "And, of course," Rinder continued, "when one knows the story of these people ... and of course of Chan Chao's own personal history, how he encountered these people, the work becomes ever richer and acquires more meaning and depth and emotional resonance."
After leaving his homeland with his family as a child and settling in the Washington area, Chao, a freelance photographer and artist, didn't become curious about Myanmar until he turned 30.
"That's when I thought to myself, maybe it was really time for me to see where I came from, who I am, and I decided to return to Burma," Chao, now 35, said at a coffee shop near the Washington apartment he shares with his wife and cat.
ROUGH JOURNEY BACK
Myanmar has a long history of military rule since independence from Britain in 1948. The current junta has been widely criticized for its poor human rights record since it took control of the country in 1988 and refused to hand over power after democratic elections two years later.
After being denied a visa twice, Chao, with the help of his father's contacts in the region, was able to approach the border through northwest Thailand and southern India.
Chao said his initial trip was a soul-searching visit that allowed him to "make some pictures and let that be that." So after eight days of taking photos, he returned to the United States, where he is a citizen, developed his film, and shared it with those close to him, including John Gossage, his former professor at the University of Maryland at College Park.
"They seemed quite extraordinary and I encouraged him," said Gossage. "I mean, I don't think he needed encouragement. I think he understood what he was getting."
That 1996 trip, along with news that some of those he met or photographed may have been killed in clashes with the military, lead to another trip to the Thai border in 1997, followed by a third to the India border in 1998. Based on several hundred rolls of film, Chao created a book, "Burma: Something Went Wrong" (2000, Nazraeli Press), a collection of more than 70 photos that led to a show at the Numark Gallery in Washington and, ultimately, to the Whitney.
Many of the refugees photographed by Chao left Myanmar shortly after 1988. The State Department estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees living along the borders with Thailand, India and Bangladesh.
"I know this a very important moment in Burmese history and that it's really sort of mobilizing the whole country to voice their opposition to the military," said Chao, who teaches photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design.
AT THE WHITNEY
His book landed in the hands of Whitney curator Rinder last year. "This was one that really caught my eye and I took it home with me and kept it around and looked at it over and over and really was just very compelled by the pictures and so when I was going on my national tour of the country for the Biennial, I made a point of visiting Chan Chao," he said in an interview with Reuters from New York.
After seeing the images in person, Rinder said he knew they had a place in the Whitney's show, which this year features 113 artists in mediums ranging from painting to performance art.
Chao used similar composition for his images of men, women and children of all ages, photographed at 12 different camps. Nearly all the subjects are seen looking directly at Chao's camera in front of blurry mountainous or jungle backgrounds. The faces are serious and singular, sad and honest.
"By making the pictures the same way, you're forced to look at subtle differences," Chao said. "When you start to accumulate the subtle differences, you have a full range of human emotion. That was my approach to this project."
Chao also said that viewers should examine the photos as if the subjects were looking back at them, forming a dialogue between the two, a technique Rinder noted.
The photos include a woman in her former school's uniform who is now a member of a rebel group, a land mine victim, a man in a sarong with a farm tool in his hand, a uniformed pro-democracy soldier, a young Buddhist monk who leads prayer at a refugee camp, and two former anti-democracy fighters.
"The whole project has been such an eye opener. Everything from the political situation to how some of those people live to how people respond to the pictures," Chao said. "I felt that ... there was a lot of luck on my part in being able to be in the right place in the right time and (have people) responding to me."