Myanmar collection

Myanmar collection was made in the year 2016, when I was there on a short working trip as a photo mentor to a group of amateur photo tourists. Myanmar is not yet the easiest tourist destination, however it is also very scenic and pristine and as such not totally overexploited photographically. Nevertheless, there are already many typical visual clichés, ethnical, geographical and cultural landmarks, that are reappearing in the touristic representations of the country.

To privately contrast the expectations of the tourist agency that I was working for, and expectations of the people I was mentoring, I started to photograph on my own, deliberately trying to avoid the subjects proposed by the travel clichés of certain places. My subjects became the banality and everydayness, normality and the average. What can you say about the country, about the place, if you are there only for short time and you do not really know the place. How can you express your own experience and tell originally about some place without repeating what has already been said?

I am sending a part of series called Myanmar collection, which is a mixture of still lifes, various details, architectural observations. While visiting popular touristic sites and even places that looked like Potemkin villages for travelers and tourists with their cameras, I was turning away from those sites and going behind the fences, into the backstreets, collecting images of everyday life that could at the same time be everyday mythology - things and objects that seemed to have, on one side some kind of useful value, and on the other side some kind of symbolic meaning.

The collection of combinations of the above-mentioned images offers possible interpretation of a certain place and time, of how does it look like to live in some defined destination, shown through various layers like daily life, religion, work, food, politics etc.

© Matija Brumen - Lemons and limes
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Lemons and limes

© Matija Brumen - Water tower
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Water tower

© Matija Brumen - Field
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Field

© Matija Brumen - Ox detail
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Ox detail

© Matija Brumen - Adorned horse
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Adorned horse

© Matija Brumen - Vindaloo
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Vindaloo

© Matija Brumen - Green curtain
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Green curtain

© Matija Brumen - Patterns
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Patterns

© Matija Brumen - temple corner
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temple corner

© Matija Brumen - Green secret
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Green secret

© Matija Brumen - Sacred tunnel
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Sacred tunnel

© Matija Brumen - Stove
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Stove

© Matija Brumen - inflation
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inflation

© Matija Brumen - Toilet composition
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Toilet composition

© Matija Brumen - Root
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Root

© Matija Brumen - Recycling
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Recycling

© Matija Brumen - Courtyard detail
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Courtyard detail

© Matija Brumen - Sun shade
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Sun shade

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