In January
2001, Joel Rubin traveled to Myanmar (formerly Burma) in order to continue
his work photographing Southeast Asian cultures. With a bag of black & white
film and no fixed itinerary, Rubin traveled throughout the isolated country
focusing his camera on common moments of the everyday. "I search for
extraordinary images in ordinary situations in which the subject is so absorbed
in his task as to be unconcerned with the presence of my camera. In Myanmar,
I was drawn to the calm intensity of the monasteries and to moments of toil
in the fields and on the lakes."
Rubin first traveled to Southeast Asia in 1997 when he spent six months
photographing in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and southern China. After a year
and half as a photo editor at the Media Studies Center in NYC, Rubin returned
to the region in March 2000, establishing himself as a freelance photojournalist
in Jakarta, Indonesia. With a background in history, Rubin specializes in
black and white documentary imagery. He photographed in East Timor for the
Associated Press and shot primarily for the New York Times in Indonesia.
Newsweek recently published a selection of his images from Myanmar
in its annual Asia special edition.
A former
British colony, now ruled by a military junta that closed the country off
from the world when it assumed power in 1962, Myanmar is an extremely impoverished
and under-developed country situated between India, China and Thailand.
Other than the capital city Rangoon in the south and the Chinese-influenced
Mandalay in the north, the country is vastly rural with little infrastructure.
Life is based in the village and days are spent working nearby fields or
fishing the coastline and lakes. The predominance of Buddhism in day-to-day
life is as strong as in any Southeast Asian country, with a vast majority
of young boys entering the monastery for some period of study.
Burma is an English translation of Myanmar – which really has always
been the name of the country according to its natives. In 1989 the name
was officially changed from Burma to Myanmar by the military regime. Linguistically
it is more accurate since it includes all the different ethnicities (Burma
refers just to the Bamar people) but since it was an action of the military
regime, some on the outside have been resistant to the name change as a
matter of political protest. The UN and Amnesty International recognize
Myanmar as the country's name while in the press it's up for grabs. For
example, the New York Times and Time use "Burma"
while Asiaweek refers to the country as "Myanmar."
A Visit to
Burma by Joel Rubin was on display through August 4, 2001.
ALLEGIANCE BY STEVE SIMON
ABOVE AND BELOW THE PAVEMENT BY SERGE J-F
LEVY
SOHO BLUES BY ALLAN TANNENBAUM
THE
FEDERATION OF BLACK COWBOYS BY TOBIN RUSSELL
AFGHANISTAN 2001 BY TEUN VOETEN
FAMILY, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS
BY OISTIN
MAC BRIDE
THE EGYPT PROJECT BY DAVID KATZENSTEIN
MYANMAR BY JOEL RUBIN
INDIA AND THE MAHA KUMBH
MELA BY MIKE TAUBER
AFGHANISTAN BY REZA
DEGHATI
For further
information on these exhibits, please contact exhibits@thehalfking.com.
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