Hunter Panther Deerfield: I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me. I’ve read a number of your interviews, and some of what came up in other interviews I wanted to ask you more about, and other more well-known subjects, like your Pink Man series, I didn’t want to ask you about, because you can find that information elsewhere. So, my first question is: you were one of the selected artists to show at Thailand's first Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. What was that experience like?

Manit Sriwanichpoom: I think the Biennale itself is quite interesting. You can see a lot of the world there. Because it's one of the most important international art expos, it’s good to see artwork from many corners of the world, which is not so easy to see otherwise. Every pavilion from each country represents their best artists, so it’s interesting to see what’s going on. But like art festivals everywhere, it has a hierarchy. If you come from a bigger country you can probably have the best pavilion because you have the budget to help you, or you build your own pavilion, or rent from the Italian government. But if you come from a poor country, you may have to rent a warehouse to help insert yourself in order to be seen. It's a big festival, so if you're from Germany, or even if you're from Australia, you have your own pavilion. All the European countries have their own pavilions.

HPD: Did Thailand have its own building?

MS: No, what we had to do is because we didn’t have enough budget to rent a proper pavilion, we had to build a pavilion ourselves. Like a makeshift pavilion, a shelter. It's more like guerrilla-style, you just go there and set up your tent, and just show your artwork. We don't have the budget, that was the first time we went there, so everything we have to build it. And it's a knock down structure with vinyl sheets to cover our artworks. But I think for me it's cool. I didn't expect us to have a fancy pavilion or anything. Even today, we can't afford a pavilion, it's too expensive. You see Japan, or even Korea, let's say the big countries are able to afford. I don't know whether China has its own pavilion yet…

HPD: Do you remember any particular moments walking around, or seeing any artists that you were interested in at Venice?

MS: I think it's really nice to see friends from other countries. Because in art circles we get to meet people when we go to festivals. You are kind of networking, as well, not just showing your art. Networking with other curators or galleries, so besides just seeing good art it's an opportunity for artists to do networking.

HPD: My next question is that I want to ask about the role of humor in your work. With the Pink Men series, and other work as well, there's a dark irony. I’m wondering where your sense of humor is coming from. How did you develop your sense of humor?

MS: I think Thailand likes the term happiness [its often called “The Land of Smiles”]. People like to live in happy moments, they don't like being stressed or having unpleasant feelings. To be able to live your life happily, you need to have a sense of humor. People try to relax and make fun of everything. When you talk to people, they are always making fun of each other, amongst their peers, and even making fun of people in power. And when you look at art, especially in folk art — not in the official art, but in the folk art — you know they all make fun of everything. That's how people can make their day pass, because they can feel that, okay, their life is not horrible. I feel this sense of humor is helping everyone to survive and get through their day-to-day.

HPD: So, it's not some extra, or unnecessary thing, but vital to life and death.

MS: Yes. You see, probably all of Southeast Asia people live like that. You go to the Philippines, or Indonesia, they know how to make fun of people. And when you look at the folk art, you can see they make fun of and challenge the rulers. And if you go back to the stories and folktales, you realize that they make fun of a lot of things. When you read, or when you listen to music, even Luk Thung, country music, also make fun of the ‘power that be.’ If you are poor, you make fun of the rich people. Or, you make fun of yourself, and when you make fun of yourself, you feel okay. Because that is maybe part of human nature. And also, it goes along well with Buddhism, which says you don't take your life too seriously.

HPD: You made a film, “Shakespeare Must Die,” which was seen as critical of the government, and censored here in Thailand. And then you made a film about the film called “Censor Must Die” that was allowed to be shown here. Can you tell me a little bit about how that happened?

MS: I think it's simple. Since we sued the censorship board already, with one case in the court, maybe when we submitted Censor Must Die, they didn’t want another case [laughs]. They just found another way to let it go, because they know that we will never give up, and we will never give in. We’ll never surrender, and so we fight. Also, it’s not a fun thing for anyone to have it be court, even if you are right or wrong, so that is one of the reasons that they didn’t want another case. So, then they try to find a way to pass it by. Since the film is produced from real event, this follows a category that is exempt from censorship. When they gave us this reason, this reason might be cited by us now in the future. We push the censorship line into their territory, because it's never been this case before. Already, so many documentaries had been submitted, produced like ours from real events, and had been censored. But this is one of the cases which now, step by step, we can push back into the censor’s territory.

HPD: So, it is a precedent that you can use now on other films. That's great. I read somewhere that there was a Hollywood film called “The Beach” that was changing the landscape of a bay called Maya Bay, and that you fought back over this. Can you tell me a bit more about what was happening? Why were they changing the local landscape?

MS: When The Beach production came to Thailand, they looked for a location to fit their perception of a tropical beach. That means a tropical beach must have coconut trees, which is ridiculous, because if you travel to the south, to the islands, they don't look like that. But they wanted to plant coconut trees anyway, for the production value. So, they chose Maya Bay, and went to the authorities to get permits. And we know that they broke the law, because in the law it protects the landscape, no altering is allowed on those pristine islands. But because they have a lot of money, they said they “donated” the money to the authorities, and they said they created jobs for local people. Anyway, they bypassed the law, and we disagreed and so we fought that, and it became a campaign. The situation became nasty because 21st Century Fox didn't want to step back, and we even told them that they should use CG [Computer Graphics]. If they can make Space Odyssey, if they can make Star Wars, what is the difficulty in making a fake beach? But the producer said that it was too expensive for them. That means they can't pay for the CG, but they can pay to destroy our nature for their own “tropical” scene. So, you can see how a big company with a lot of money can destroy other countries. We even took this to the US Embassy, trying to complain about how an American company was destroying this, and even bribed the local government to get their business done. You have to have the law. This law is implemented everywhere. But they had a lot of money, and they had PR. And we were just normal people. We didn’t have lobbyists. We don't have a PR Company working for us. So, who do you think is going to win? So, after that, they could do whatever they wanted. They shot the film; they finished the film. But because what happened to them… what happened to Leonardo DiCaprio, and the film’s director, [Danny Boyle] this case stuck in their minds. DiCaprio has tried to fix this, to donate, to set up Green World Rising, and to whitewash what he did to our country, to the nature. But by then the case had passed by for twenty years. And now the courts say that 21st Century Fox has to pay restoration for the beach. But after twenty year. Forget it. I mean, how will justice prevail after twenty years? I mean belated justice is an injustice in itself. That's what happened, but we became villains because we obstructed the film. They called us an NGO, but we are not an NGO, we are just artists. But because we lose, they point to us and say that we just wanted to be known, because of a celebrity like DiCaprio. But as for me, I don't care who the fuck he is. He can make millions in the US, it doesn't matter, I have nothing to do with that. But then, let's say this “moral consciousness” stuck in these people’s minds even today. And when you ask the question about what happened during those days, they are going to freak out saying, “I did everything right, above the law, etc, etc.” They’re so defensive. But already the damage is done. What can they do? I already said that they could save the nature. They didn’t have to do it the way they did. They could just go there and shoot. Because I am a filmmaker, I know how to do that. You shoot something there, and the rest you do with CG, computer graphics.

HPD: How did you find out about this incident at all?

MS: They did the PR for the film, and we realized that this was not just a simple thing. And Ing K [Manit’s partner] used to be a beach bum over there. She used to sleep on the beach. It’s so beautiful there.

HPD: Can you tell me about social activism in your work? And also, how that relates to your photojournalism.

MS: I used to do photojournalism, but then I realized that when you just report, it's not enough. You have to take action. And so, then I decided, instead of just running after the story, it's better to create the story. So, I changed the strategy. If you wanted to stop something that might happen, because the government policy is wrong, then you have to do something. You have to make people aware. To make a dialogue. This is the way; to try to make people concerned with what's going on, and to understand the situation.

HPD: Are there particular artists who are or activists or people that you are inspired by or particularly like?

MS: I think I’m inspired by the art, for instance, of Barbara Kruger. I think she is very strong. And even the Guerrilla Girls. I like artists from the 1970s, when they did all the the movements. Also, people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and even Aung San Suu Kyi. The way these people fight is very inspiring.

HPD: A question that Hans-Ulrich Obrist always asks, that I read in a book of interviews that he did, is a question that I now want to ask you. What is an unrealized project that you have? Something that you would like to do but haven't done yet.

MS: It’s too big for me, but a photography museum. With a priority on local knowledge. Understand local photography first, because international work you can find on the internet. But this would work on saving local knowledge, local archives. That is the most important, because this stuff is gone every day. HPD: A really striking feature of Bangkok's developing urban landscape is the emergence of all these shopping malls, springing up all over the place. How do you feel about this?

MS: I just came back from a public hearing from the city planning group, and my concern is that in the new group they are drafting, Bangkok is still centralized. So, that's what I voice to the planner. This is not the good idea, because we talk about decentralization, not just only about political power, but also economic power. We have to spread it out. We have to distribute this wealth and economy to the other cities. Otherwise, Bangkok is going to have more and more problems. I gave them the example of old cities like Paris, or even New York, they stop growing. Also, we don’t know in a twenty-year time what the economy will be like. Since its the digital era, many jobs and many businesses that we have today might disappear, and our lifestyle might be rapidly changed. So, I'm not sure the draft their planning is relevant, also my concern about decentralization is still an issue.

HPD: And shopping malls are for you an example of centralization?

MS: Yes, because of the amount of consumption by city people. It’s scary. I think this has to be a question for everyone, for every family, for every country, about how much we consume every day. Do you really need that much? Things that you never use. Why do you have them? People never have that question themselves. We have to make people aware of this. Capitalism might not be growing without consumerism. Consumerism is the mechanism that makes capitalism grow. So, if you push people to consume less, it means that capitalism grows slowly. But why do you need it to go fast? Like so many young people want to be billionaires in a few years. Why? What's the good of that? We can name so many billionaires, but what have they done for the world? They just have money, that's all. But when you look through civilization, what have created? Florence without the Medicis wouldn't be the Florence today. But what that means is that if you have money, the question becomes how you are going to use it. That’s the question for Thailand. We have lots of millionaires and billionaires, but what have they done for the country? They own businesses, okay, they create jobs and so on, but what else do they do?

HPD: Leo Tolstoy said that the way to get people to get along is to ask them what they love, and what they hate. Because often we love and hate similar things. So, I just want to ask you, not about art, but just about yourself: what do you love and what you hate?

MS: [laughs] First thing I have to love is humans. I have to love animals. I have to love our planet. Because if you don't have love you will destroy everything. I talk about this in a broad meaning. When I think about loving a particular thing, that means I have a bias, because then I hate other things. We care about the planet, and we don't want to destroy it. And how are we going to accomplish that? We love animals and so we care about animals, even though they don’t belong to us. Anywhere in this world. When you learn about something happening to an animal, you have feelings. So, when you say love to the human, regardless of race, no matter if you're white, or black, or yellow, or short, or tall, that’s what I care most about.

HPD: And what do you hate?

MS: I hate people who have no love.

[laughs]

MS: Because no love kills everything. People kill each other today because they have no love. Why do you kill the other person? Because you are worried the other person is going to steal something from you? Why are white supremacists worried about black people? Because they worry that the black people are going to steal something from them. Because they hate them, then they can be able to kill them. We bomb other people because we are worried that they are going to do something to us. Because we don't have much love. We don't have love anymore. It’s very simple. And I hate people who have no love. That's the problem, and I try to love them, but I'm not sure that I can.

HPD: Is there anything final that you'd like to say?

MS: I think everyone can feel that our world today is very hard to live in. Conflict is everywhere. The weather in Bangkok is hotter than ever before. So, I'm worried we won't be able to find solutions to save our planet fast enough. When we talk about saving the planet, it’s not just about humans, but saving the whole planet. And I don't think we have that consensus, that strong will. So, when you talk about the G20, they still are talking about the carbon tax and that is all. About who is going to gain and who is going to lose. And no issue at all about how we are going to save the world. Everyone just does their business, no matter. When everything is gone, I don't know how they are going to enjoy life. That is the problem.

HPD: Well thank you so much for your thoughts, and your openness, and your honesty.

Hunter Panther Deerfield: I believe it was Leo Tolstoy who said the way to have any two people get along is to ask them what they love and what they hate. We all generally love and generally hate the same things. So, I ask you: what do you love, and what do you hate?

Sai Htin Linn Htet: I hate I would say, being restricted, rules, and the restrictions of society. Routines, the normal, the typical. That doesn’t excite me. To be specific, the nine-to-five lifestyle. I have nothing against people that live that way. I totally respect why we have these kinds of boundaries and restrictions in order to control society and put everything in order. But for me as an individual, what I hate the most is boundaries. What I love is destroying the boundaries.

HPD: Transgression. Is that a word you would use?

SHLH: Yeah, that is a word I would use. For example, I used to limit myself within a boundary, by sticking to photography and being loyal to the restrictions of what that medium can offer. But with time I found it's not enough, I wanted to extend the boundaries. By trying other mediums — for example, painting, videography, anything available to me — I always try to get out of the boundaries.

HPD: Is there a particular moment that you remember first coming up against a boundary? And the desire to transgress?

SHLH: I have been dealing with that since I was young. It’s not a particular moment, it’s the whole profile of my life. My father is a huge fan of art, his friends are writers, painters, and he used to be a comedian. Not a standup comedian, but a comedian from Burmese theatre. His friend is one of the most famous comedians here. But my father decided for a more practical life, because the artistic industry back then is quite chaotic. They didn’t really have boundaries, they had their own definition of boundaries, quite different from my own definition. So, since I was young, I grew up with books and art, but my dad didn’t want me to be an artist. And not because he hated me creating things, but because he didn’t want me socialized within the art industry. He had a perspective of the industry according to his own experiences, and he didn’t want me to the face the same thing. But voila, two decades later, here I am, doing the things he doesn’t really approve of, so I would say I have to get out of my own boundaries too. So, there's no particular moment, but the flow of life in a way.

HPD: If I remember from a previous conversation, your father is a dentist, and your mother is a judge. What does your mother think of your artistic career?

SHLH: I wouldn't become who I am without the support of my mom. I mean her emotional support, because she can sense my happiness. My dad doesn’t really understand me, because I'm more introverted, and my dad has OCD. I found that out recently, but I’ve been dealing with it all my life.

HPD: You, yourself, have OCD?

SHLH: My dad has OCD. I have ADHD-ish. [laughs] I don't know where it comes from. I recently found that he has OCD. When I was young my mom had to transfer to other places because she's a judge, so I ended up with my dad. Since he has OCD, he’s very strict. He likes everything put in order. I'm the opposite of that. I cannot be that organized, I cannot be neat and tidy. And he was always stressed because of working for the government as a dentist. I became his therapist in a way, whenever he came back from work. I was just a kid, eight or nine years old. And he would talk about how stressful his work is. I understand what he's going through, but I had to take everything as a kid. So, I become mature when I'm not supposed to. So, I mean, that's the story of my dad. My mom is the other way. She always supported me. She can sense who I am. I did not really open up to my dad emotionally. Of course, I love him, but I did not really open up to him. We are not coming from a very prestigious or wealthy family. My mom can sense my emotions. She wants me to do whatever will make me happy. I'm choosing this lifestyle which is very unpredictable. The art industry as a whole, you cannot predict anything. And especially this country, anything can happen. If you look at the politics, we don't know what will happen. The next ten days, tomorrow, we can't really predict. A coup d’etat can happen any time. The political situation is not stable. And what I'm doing is not very practical, I cannot really plan anything, but just try to do the best of course. While living this type of lifestyle my mother has been very supportive.

HPD: What was the first medium of art that you got interested in?

SHLH: The first interaction I had with a medium of art was literature. We have a very small library in Lashio, which is not a very big city in the Shan state. So, I grew up with that. By the time my dad was working I was an only child, so I don't really hang out with other kinds too. So all I did was read, and then some books about the biography of painters, etc. so I'm familiar with literature, painting, and the fact that I had the chance to live with the Mandalay headmaster of the University of Art and Culture, I spent a while at his place….

HPD: How was that?

SHLH: It was just for a short while, but I got to understand the inner perspective of how an artist’s life is.

HPD: How did you end up with the headmaster?

SHLH: So, my mom had to move to Mandalay, which was the former second capital after Yangon. So, we moved there when I was seven. My mom was moving but she could not come yet, as there was a procedure for waiting for another judge to come to her place to transfer all the responsibilities etc., so by the time she would have finished that, school would have already begun, so I had to go to Mandalay and stay with the headmaster of the University of Art and Culture. He’s my dad’s friend. I had to stay there for a while, for like five or six months. I went to the same school his daughter went to, which is very close to the mortuary. It was a very creepy feeling.

HPD: The University of Art and Culture — this was more traditional art, right?

SHLH: Yeah, more traditional art. But back then I didn’t really understand what art was. They mostly relied on technique, not on concepts. So, it's very traditional, typical, propaganda-ish, kind of art. Everything's beautiful. Landscape. Cultural. You know what I mean. But later in my life, I learned about very strong contemporary artists in Myanmar.

HPD: And how did you learn about contemporary art?

SHLH: I would say that in Myanmar we don't have many institutions to learn about contemporary art. It's all about learning from whatever available sources. The internet, some of the local galleries, Myanm/art, they have some contemporary sources, some libraries. I mean, it's scattered about. It's not like I learned contemporary art in a university or something. It was mainly about educating myself, trying to learn everything by myself. Of course, traveling around workshops and museums really helped. I took part in a few of them. So yeah, that too.

HPD: Are there certain artists, artworks, films, or literature that’ve been influential to you?

SHLH: Are there particular media that inspire me?

HPD: Or people that you’ve been inspired by?

SHLH: The first I would say would be photography. And the first and foremost photographer is Daido Moriyama. You know Japanese Photographers. Like we were mentioning the other day, while talking with Kaung Htet [our previous meeting]. I have a huge love for some Japanese photographers. And it started with Daido Moriyama. And then it came to Ikko Narahara, Eikoh Hosoe, and you know, later Shomei Tomatsu — his work “Skin of the Nations” — and Antoine d’Agata. I feel like I'm speaking the same language as these photographers. Another one is the painter Francis Bacon. I would say he's very important in my life too.  And how did I learn about Bacon? Just searching up on YouTube and finding an old documentary about him. And I started buying. When I was in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, I couldn't help myself asking who they liked at their bookstore. I asked if they have Francis Bacon books, because I really love him. I would say my inspiration doesn't really come from just one medium. It's a combination of many things. Of course, when I started to show my interest in candid photography — because candid photography is very wild, it doesn't have many rules, it's more about being authentic and being raw — the first name that popped up when I was doing research was Daido Moriyama. So, I with the help of my friends, I bought his book… I forgot the name... that book that has all the work of his… But I looked at it and I didn’t understand it at all. I was like what the fuck. I don't understand it. I looked through it and I put it on the book shelf for a while. And of course, that was several years ago. And when I started to practice photography, I didn't understand art or photography that much.  Later, as I evolved into my photography, my practice, and my knowledge about art, I found that Daido and I speak the same language. It’s his raw prettiness. I don't know, it's like you just click with somebody. You don't really know that person. You don't really know them in real life. It's just like you found a soulmate. It's your instinct, it's your gut. We speak the same language. And from that I got so much inspiration from his work, but I don't copy his personal style at all. I’ll look at his work again, and then I’ll close the book, and I’ll reflect about what it makes me feel like while I'm looking through the work. And I’ll try to remember those feelings and use them whenever I create my work. That's how I developed my first series of work. The monochrome series. Sorry for such a long answer…  Later, when my work got more and more mature, I realized I had set my own boundaries and I didn’t like that. I had to evolve in a way. Why was I doing documentary work in color but only my personal project in black and white? My personal project has to represent me. So that's why it evolved into color. I started to learn about all these experimental films, all these famous cinematographers and famous filmmakers. From the Czech Republic. From everywhere. I started to think about how to show my own emotions in color. So, I went to this workshop in Penang. My mentor there was Maggie Steber, who is a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year. Just learning things from her totally changed me. I can reveal myself and express myself in color photography now.

HPD: What did she say? Anything particular?

SHLH: You know that there is some power that you can sense from someone. Especially when near them, you can see what kind of person they are. And then you feel like you already learnt something, spiritually. Maggie Steber is that kind of special person for me. The same thing with Antoine d’Agata. I really wanted to join his workshop because I'm a huge fan of his work, so I went to Angkor Photo Festival. I didn't have a chance to join his workshop. My mentor was also great, but I wanted to join Antoine’s, so I just talked to him. His main work is about prostitution, sex, desire, lust. It’s very controversial, emotional work. I only chatted with him. Just being near him, talking for ten or fifteen minutes, I think I learned a lot about many things. It's not about how great of an artist you are. It has to be a combination of both. If you are a shitty human being, it shows in your work. People can sense it, you know. Like your aura itself is an emotional medium, people can sense it. If it's bullshit, they know it's bullshit. So, the people I really admire are a combination of both: great artists and also great human beings at the same time. And Antoine d’Agata, people judge him because his work is mostly about sex, the extremes of the human condition, but he's such a gentleman, So, that's how I learn things. Not through institutions or anything, but sometimes I have this opportunity, so I learn, spiritually. It sounds a bit cliched, but yeah.

HPD: I was just yesterday reading Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s book of interviews, which was at Myanm/art, and he said in the introduction that one question he always asks people in all of his interviews: “do you have an unfinished project or an unrealized project that you'd like to do.” So, I’d like to ask you that question: do you have an idea for something you haven't done yet, but that you'd like to do?

SHLH: Oh man, yeah of course. I think like — I’m sorry I always try to beat around the bush whenever I answer something because I have more answers to each question — but yeah, I used to think that if I just focus on my own practice I don't really have to care about any other thing, but that’s not how the world works. Now everybody can be a… I totally forgot the name, anyway, the lady shot with Rolleiflex all her life... and then she…

HPD: Oh, like the nanny, who did self-portraits in all the mirrors.

SHLH: Yeah, I totally forgot her name.

HPD: Nan Goldin? Wait no, that's a famous photographer.... [It was Vivian Maier]

SHLH: I mean not everyone can be like her. She died and left all her boxes of films. I used to think that way, that I'd just create works and I didn’t really care about what happened to them. But it doesn't work that way. Everybody these days is creating. It’s not that special anymore. I have this whole vision for a project, not just for myself, but somehow, it’s a very important political, environmental project that I’ve developed. And I’m thinking about it right now, by means of a concept, by means of how I’ll execute it, visually, with multi-media, motion films, sounds… I already have this plan. I just cannot materialize it. That frustrates me.

HPD: What is that plan?

SHLH: It's very related to environmental issues here. I have to do it now. Time is ticking. I have to do it as soon as possible, but the thing is… I don't have the budget for it. It’s very related to what can happen. So, the project I want to do relates to the danger of the environmental situation in Myanmar. It can happen at any time, and I want to work on that. But we don't know when that danger can happen.

HPD: You want to do your work before the danger can happen?

SHLH: Yeah, I want to find a way that I can have a grant or funding for that. Let’s see whether I can do it or not. I think it would be very important. Not just for myself, but for the country and for the people.

HPD: But you wish to be very secretive about the nature of the project, and its purpose?

SHLH: Yeah. Sometimes you're talking about it and it doesn’t happen, so what's the point? It will spoil the fun. Of course, as I am working as a curator and as a visual artist, sometimes it's hard. The earning is not there all the time. So of course: the budget. Sometimes you have great plans for a personal project, but you don't have the budget for it.

HPD: In your opinion, what does the Myanmar art scene need?

SHLH: Institutions. Better institutions. We have a tremendous weakness in state-provided institutions, especially for contemporary art. Myanmar has started to open up. People are saying there are so many possibilities. But we have a University of Art and Culture that doesn't have a photography department. They have a painting department, a cinematography department. Cinematography is like more progressive these days. But here people don't really consider photography as an art. We need more education. For the artists, as well. We need more state-funded art spaces. State-funded artist exchange program. I think what we need is education in every sector. Education is the main component here, so that people know the importance of art. So that artists are more empowered to create, empowered and confident in their creations. That’s what we need for now. 

HPD: And what is the importance of art?

SHLH: As you may know, especially these days, in the contemporary art industry, social change and art sometimes become companions. Many of the artists have issue-based artworks. I think sometimes it has an impact on social change, too. In Myanmar there are so many things that we need to change, because our traditional and cultural values sometimes aren’t very fitted to the contemporary timeline. We have discrimination based on identity, based on beliefs, based on religion, gender and sexual orientation. And based on age. If you’re young and capable some will think you don’t know as much as someone who’s old and stupid. So, Myanmar is still very closed. We have so many unresolved social issues. 

HPD: Unlike the West that's resolved all of its social issues...?

SHLH: I mean look at the United States. There are laws and mechanisms that people can report too. We don't really have that kind of rule of law in Myanmar. You already might know about freedom of expression here. Freedom of speech, freedom of press, we don't have that kind of thing fully yet. I think art is a way that is very important for social change. With art we can directly address the audience about what is actually happening. That is why I think art is really important. You know the recent issue with the Reuters journalists [Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were jailed]? And how people responded to it? That's one of the reasons I stepped out of my classroom. I used to teach peace building. After doing that for a while, I thought that the more efficient way to social change is through art. When people are coming to an art space, they are not expecting to learn a lesson. They are not mentally prepared to debate. They just come and enjoy the artwork. If you can deliver something about social change through the artworks, I think that is really wonderful.

HPD: Can you talk a bit more about your background in peacebuilding?

SHLH: I worked with World Learning for several years, since 2013. I took part in some of the World Learning programs, which is a program in collaboration with the School of International Training (SIT), and so I used to work as a peace educator at an institute called Institute for Political and Civic Engagement, which is based at the American Center. And I worked there for four or five years. I have interests in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, peace education, and advocacy, as I told you the other day. Everything started because there was an organized religious conflict in my hometown. It was organized by an unidentifiable group of people. I think mainly it was a tactic of the military. That's what their strategy is. The whole town isn’t pluralistic, but my family circle is very pluralistic and diverse. We hang out with many different religions and ethics groups. That’s normal for us. So, when the conflict started to happen, all of our family and friends were impacted. I didn’t like that, and I was trying to find the answers, and that's how I came to have a huge interest in peacebuilding. That's how I got interested in resolving the conflict in a positive way.

HPD: Amazing. Thank you for these answers. Finally, do you have any questions for me? Or advice for this project that I’m working on?

SHLH: How did you start? When did you get the idea to start this?

HPD: Essentially, after I finished my studies in Singapore, I was intending to move to Vietnam, to pursue my own art practice. My focus for my thesis was on conceptual art dealing with archives, and I wanted to continue this with my own project. When I started meeting artists in Vietnam, I realized there was a lack of archives and a lack of experimental platforms. But there was also a lot of willingness amongst artists to meet and share their work. It was really the inspiration of the Surrealist magazines that you find in Paris in the 1930s and 1940s — Andre Breton's Minataure, George Bataille's Documents — that gave me the idea to do something like this for Southeast Asia. That’s what set me off on this project. And it has shifted and evolved as I've gone along and realized, “hey I want to include photojournalists, I want to include traditional craft artists, I want to have conversations with academics and people outside of the contemporary art frame,” and so it has organically come to where it is now.

SHLH: What is the influence of your grandfather [Mark Shaw]? You mentioned he is a very well known, internationally famous photographer. So, what was your childhood like, living with him, learning from the artist? His influence?

HPD: My grandfather died when my father was eight, so I never knew him, and my father really never knew him either. To be honest growing up I was completely uninterested in photography. I was surrounded by it, but I could care less about it. It was only in my studies in Singapore that I realized I could tie myself, genealogically, to my grandfather and that this would open certain doors. Purely as branding or a PR move, not that I really cared at all. Actually, I was able to do an exhibition with Leica of his photographs that got me a free camera. That was very lovely. And then I was able to do my thesis project on archives, relating them to my family's archive. But it was always sort of a sleight of hand that I did. Because emotionally I have no attachment to him, or even really to the images. Or to photography per se. It was never a medium that I was particularly interested in. As I embark upon this project it can be a nice frame to use to describe what it is that I'm doing. My grandfather took lots of images of celebrities and socialites and artists in his time, and he was particularly known for taking candid images, unposed images, and that's something I'm gradually becoming more interested in doing myself. Particularly taking shots of artists with their artworks in their studios. Really though, my relationship with my grandfather is something mentors have more suggested that I bring up, rather than it being naturally at the forefront of my mind.

SHLH: It's a stupid question, but what do you want to achieve in life? What do you imagine yourself doing in the future? Because you're young and you're doing so many important things right now, meeting with artists and having so much momentum.

HPD: You sound like my PR agent.

[laughs]

SHLH: You need to start paying me. I mean like, now you are twenty-one. Twenty-two?

HPD: Twenty-three. I'm old, man.

SHLH: Old, yeah. I used to say when I was twenty-three that I was old. But like now you’ve started to engage with artists from Asia, and you’re trying to do experimental approaches. After this project what do you want to do next? Like you asked me, what is the thing you really want to do?

HPD: Well I'm still interested in working with my grandfather's archive. But more thorough the lens of poetry. Poetry and philosophy are my first loves and I think that I am feeling a pull back to really rigorously both engage with philosophy, but also rigorously engage with poetry. And whether that engagement is through an abstract frame like conceptual art, or through something more comparatively straightforward as writing, I'm not yet sure. But I think that's generally where things would lead me. I'm also just interested in having conversations and seeing where they go. I think long-term I would be very grateful and eager to have conversations with people across different disciplines as diverse as politics, religion, etc. and I don't know what the containers… I don't know what the excuses for those conversations might be... but I'd be interested in trying to have them. Just learning. I guess I'm curious. I just want to learn about things.

SHLH: Never lose the wonder. That's the thing.

Hunter Panther Deerfield: How did you get into taking photos?

Yu Yu Myint Than: Photography is not my first career. My first career was as a teacher's trainer. I was in Hong Kong for postgraduate study, and everything was stressful. I lived in a really small apartment. I was the last student in class. I didn’t want to be at home because it was too small, I didn’t want to be in school because it was too stressful. So, I would just sit in a park. It was a very cheap area where I could afford my apartment and so my neighborhood was very rough. I met a lot of construction workers who were not from Hong Kong. In Myanmar if you make eye contact, you just smile. Because it was my first overseas experience, whenever I met my neighbors, they would look at me and I would look at them and I would smile. But they thought I was flirting with them, and they thought I was a Filipino housemaid looking for sex work part-time. So, they would give me a little strip of paper. They were approaching me with a time and their phone number and this kind of stuff. The first time I didn't know what it was about, but my friend told me “oh, they are approaching you for this purpose” and I was really freaked out. I didn’t know how to respond. I was still quite young, and it was my first experience being overseas, and so I started to bring my camera to pretend that I was a tourist. Whenever I went out, I would have my camera. So, this is how I started photography. With street photography. Yeah, it's crazy. Funny experience…

HPD: And after?

YY: After teaching I came back. I worked for two years as a teacher’s trainer in Yangon and became a hobbyist photographer. I became more and more serious, and then a reportage workshop came up and I applied, and I got in. Even though I was just a hobbyist I wanted to tell a story. About myself, about other people, but I didn’t know how to tell the story with no training. It was a three-month long workshop and I was the only amateur. Others were professional photographers working for newspapers, some from Bangladesh some from Norway, but I learnt a lot from them. After that workshop I decided “Ok, I’ll quit my job.” I decided to become a photographer, but I had no platform and I had to get experience and build up a portfolio. So, I applied to the Myanmar Times to be a staff photographer, because I thought that being a photojournalist, I would have a lot of room to tell stories. I worked there for eleven months but working with the newspaper didn't give a me lot of room for telling stories because the newspaper worked on daily news and I'm more into in-depth stories, features, long-form documentary. So I quit my job at the Myanmar Times and started working for Myanmar Deita. There I have more freedom to learn new things, such as visual storytelling and curation. I think I made the right choice.

HPD: What is Myanmar Deita?

YY: Myanmar Deita is an organization that develops resources for local photographers and filmmakers. We do curation, we do workshops, and we are now trying to build up the first photography school in Myanmar, which will start in October 2019. This year we will start with women photographers, the next year we will try to have mixed gender classes.

HPD: You mentioned a workshop that inspired you to quit your previous job and focus on photography, what about that workshop was so inspiring?

YY: In that workshop we had to produce a long-form story that was two-to-three months long, so I decided to do a positive story on the conflict area in the middle of Myanmar. I tried to build up a positive story connecting the two groups that experienced the conflict. But I didn’t have journalistic experience. I went there as a photographer with no connections. I built up trust and I had a lot of struggles and challenges. A lot of special police would follow me, and I had a lot of people stopping me and questioning me. Sometimes people would show up at my hotel room, because it was a sensitive area. I was really freaked out, but I think the more they tried to stop me the more I wanted to finish it. I noticed that was different than my teaching job. If I had struggles or challenges in my teaching career, I would stop for a while. It wasn’t very exciting. But this new experience, the more they tried to stop me, the more I wanted to do it, so this is where I realized I wanted to be. We don't have a lot of chances to know what we’re interested in.

HPD: Can you tell me about Thuma [the all-women Burmese photography collective] and how that came to be?

YY: I used to work for The Myanmar Times. Most of my friends in the community were male photographers. As I told you, I’m interested in doing long-form photojournalism. At that time, I was working on a project and I wanted to get feedback from my peers. But it was so difficult to get. Mostly they hung out at beer stations. I do drink beer, but I found that we had a friendly community, but not the kind of community that gave honest feedback and took work really seriously. I need that kind of community. I didn’t find enough support. Not that my peers weren’t serious, but just it wasn’t what I wanted to get. Also, when I met my mentor at the workshop that I had attended, she told me she wanted to teach a woman-only workshop in Myanmar. But at that time, I can only count three women photographers in the scene. That’s not enough to bring her to Myanmar to do a workshop. She asked me to collect portfolios of women photographers, but I could not find good portfolios that suited the qualifications of the workshop. I thought we were lacking women photographers, and I also wanted this kind of community, and so I thought I should start an informal women photographers’ meetup, so anyone could be a photographer, as I myself started as a hobbyist. And so, I started an informal meetup and anyone could join who was interested. We met every month and after nine months we were lucky to have a basic storytelling workshop for women photographers, with the help of my friend from Chile. After that workshop I found that the other women were also interested in storytelling, and although the levels were different, I thought it was ok, we can build everyone’s level as I started very low, and as long as you’re passionate it’s ok. We all had this common ground, we all wanted to tell a story, so why didn’t we start a collective? We started with the eight women from that workshop. It started informally because we didn’t know each other personally. We did a pilot period for the first five months. We ran a workshop where we shot a mini-story so I could know that they were really serious about storytelling. We set a deadline, and some met the deadline, and some didn’t meet the deadline. Maybe I’m a little bit bitchy because those who didn’t meet the deadline were out. Now we have five women photographers and we officially launched Thuma collective because we’re strong and passionate and really want to be storytellers. We started in October of 2017.

HPD: Do you think photojournalism allows for a particular kind of storytelling that writing or film or painting or other arts cannot provide?

YY: I think photojournalism can tell a story, but there are lots of other ways to tell a story. But I don't call myself a photojournalist, I'm a storyteller. The type of storytelling I do is not always photojournalism. Some stories need a photojournalistic way of telling, some ways we may need a fictionalized way of telling. Sometimes we can tell the story directly, sometimes we have to tell the story indirectly. For example, the story I worked on with a girl who was abused as a housemaid. When I met her, she said that she hated the pictures of her that were in the newspaper. A lot of people told her story directly showing her bruises, her scars, this haunts her memory and that re-traumatizes her. It's not wrong to tell her story directly but what about the people who we’re reporting on? She has been in this trauma, so by telling this story again and again directly this only re-traumatizes her. I decided to tell the story in a fictionalized way, not very journalistic, so I recreated her memories. There were lots of ways to tell a story, I won’t say which ones are better, but we have to think about which ways are effective for what kinds of stories. I don't categorize myself as a photojournalist or a reportage storyteller or a fictionalizer or a fine artist. I don't categorize myself as some stories I choose the style of reportage because I need to show it that way. But some stories I need to do another way.

HPD: Can you tell me about this photo series [Jigsaw]?

YY: Mostly I pick stories where I can reflect myself. This story I picked because I was in Bangladesh for seven months. I didn't have a lot of friends. Although Myanmar and Bangladesh are neighbor countries, I find it difficult to dwell with the communities in Bangladesh. I felt like a stranger, and I hated this alienation and isolation. I wanted to do something similar to how I felt, so I was shooting symbolic pictures of alienation and isolation. I came to know the Somali community when I went to the immigration office to extend my visa. Because Bangladesh is a very bureaucratic country, even to extend a visa I had to go to immigration offices more than ten times. The waiting time is three hours, sometimes four hours, sometimes the whole day. I met my subjects for [Jigsaw] there. They were also international students waiting to extend their student visas. I met with them, I hung out with them, and found that I had similar experiences with them. So, I mixed my emotions with theirs. I don't think that's a “photojournalistic” way of doing things, because it’s pouring out my feelings into their life. If I consider this a photojournalistic series, it’s not fair because I am projecting my isolation and alienation. Maybe they're not isolated as I'm isolated. So, [Jigsaw] is a reflection of myself on the Somali community.

HPD: What did you learn about that community? Did any stories stick out?

YY: Mostly they told me about the discrimination they are facing in Bangladesh. That really shocked me because we are in a ‘dark’ country. Myanmar, Bangladesh. We have the same experience being discriminated against by color. For example, in Myanmar we have less opportunities and a lower salary than other international workers, and also in Bangladesh it is the same. Bangladeshis are discriminated against within their country and they also discriminate against Somalians. Bangladeshis talk about being discriminated against, but they also discriminate against other people. I think that's not fair. So that makes me interested. Another thing is that the Somali are missing home. Of course, they are isolated. They don't have friends. They study in a Bangladeshi international school. I visited their class. There was a grouping of local Bangladeshi students. I met with one Somali girl who was sitting in a corner. She was the only Somali girl. Nobody talked to her. Other people were talking, going around. I asked her “do you have friends.” She said, ‘I don't have friends, I have classmates, but they don't talk to me.’ Also, I talked to several Bangladeshi students and they said, “Yu Yu be careful, they are not good people, they make fakes, they do drugs.” Who knows! Bangladeshis also do drugs. Other international people, other foreigners also do drugs. And yet they discriminate against Somali people, saying they are drug dealers, they make fake money. Bangladeshis don't know exactly what it is, but in their mind, they have a ‘black concept’ for the Somali community and they even stopped me from making friends with the Somali. Bangladeshi people said they never talked with them. Even my teacher from school said, ‘oh Yu Yu be careful.’ Why? We are the same. So, I met with a bunch of international students, and from them my friendship circle got bigger and bigger. I met with ten guys and five girls, and they took me to their friends’ homes and their cousins’ homes. I visited their houses, and farewell parties, and birthday parties and their school, and this kind of stuff. It’s different from my experience. For me I don't have a community. I am isolated and alienated. But for them they have their own community and they are creating their own bubble. So that’s my impression of how they’ve made their life positive.

HPD: What were you doing in Bangladesh?

YY: I was doing the international photography course at Pathshala.

HPD: How long were you there for?

YY: Six months, but actually I stayed seven months because I couldn't get a visa to return home.

HPD: You couldn't get a visa to return home to your own country?

YY: I kind of like officially overstayed because I couldn’t extend my visa.

HPD: Where would you like to see your work go? Are there certain goals that you have?

YY: I’d like to see my work in book form. Because the book will give you time to think. Once you see through all the pictures, you’ll also have time to re-see and re-think. I’m making a self-published art book. I've already finished the printing, but I need to wait a few more months to start the publication.

HPD: What do you think of photography? Of telling stories through cameras. As opposed to telling stories through painting, or poems, or fiction writing?

YY: Photography and painting may be similar because we’re telling a story with visuals. But what I think is if you tell a story with a picture it will give you time to think. We see a lot of movies right. I don't remember one scene in my mind. But for example, I have a lot of pictures that stick in my mind. Photography lasts longer than video. Maybe because I’m interested more in photography than other forms of art. And about poetry… I think some people do poetry with images, and so I don't think there are lots of differences in telling stories. With different types of photography, we have prose form or poetry form or reporting form. For example, some pictures are poetic so let’s say it’s poetry. Some pictures are very direct, so let’s say it’s reporting. So, I don't think there’s a lot of differences with words and visuals. But because we have different types of people, some people more easily remember images, some people more easily remember words, some people more easily remember sound… We have different types of learners, so maybe that answers your question or not.

HPD: Is there anything else you want to talk about in this interview?

YY: In my photographic journey people always tell me that “we tell the story of other people in order to hear from the voiceless.” I don't agree with that. Nobody is voiceless. We just cannot hear them. So, my way of photography is that I’m telling stories, but mostly I’m telling myself. I'm not doing it for other people. I'm not working for the Somali community. I'm not working for the girls who are being trafficked. Actually, we are kind of selfish, as we are working for ourselves. For my kind of photography, I am echoing myself. My position is not that I'm superior to them. If we say that I'm telling their story it means that I’m superior to them. My position in photography is that we are on the same level. We are doing a collaborative job. I’m echoing myself in the stories I’m telling. Sometimes I tell a story directly myself, like I'm shooting my self-portrait, or I'm telling a story by myself. Sometimes I'm telling other people’s stories, to echo myself. I'm not in a higher position than other people I'm shooting. We are on the same level.