Largely isolated from the world for more than four decades, Myanmar has made a remarkable return to the global stage following a political transformation that represents a watershed moment in the country's history. Now, for the first time ever, the rich culture, stunning landscapes and diverse peoples of the country are presented in a unique visual time capsule. 

Here is the new Myanmar as seen over a single week by a team of thirty famous photographers from eleven different countries. Their mission? To capture the life and spirit of Myanmar from every angle in every corner of the country. Through the downtown streets of Yangon and the handicraft centres of Mandalay, above the temple-dotted plains of Bagan and on the waters of Inle Lake, inside border towns and hilltribe villages and all the way to the furthest reaches of the north and south. The portrait they created reveals a nation full of natural beauty, old-world charm, deep spirituality and new hope. 

Featuring essays that provide context on Myanmar’s history and culture and hundreds of outstanding original photographs, 7 Days in Myanmar shows why the world is watching Myanmar and why Myanmar is ready for the world. 

'This coffee-table book provides a fascinating look into modern Myanmar... The photos are superbly laid out and captioned...' - Expat Living magazine

Denis D. Gray, author of the introductory essay on Myanmar past and present, was born in the Czech Republic and resided in Germany, South Africa and France until his university education at Yale and George Washington. He served in Japan and South Vietnam as a U.S. Army officer before joining the Associated Press in Albany, New York, in 1972. A year later he was assigned to cover the war in Indochina. Since 1975 he has reported major stories for the AP in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, ranging from coups in Thailand to Olympic Games and the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Balkans and elsewhere. He has also contributed to numerous magazines including Smithsonian, National Geographic, GEO Germany, Travel and Leisure and Reader’s Digest. He first went to Myanmar in the mid-1970s and has covered the country since, although he was banned from entering the country for many years. He was removed from the blacklist, along with many colleagues, not long after President Thein Sein took office.

John Falconer, who contributed an illustrated essay on early Burmese photography, is Lead Curator Visual Arts and Curator of Photographs at the British Library, London. He specializes in 19th-century photography and is an authority on the history of photography in Asia, particularly the Indian sub-continent, Central and Southeast Asia. He has published extensively in these areas and is the author of the first detailed history of early photography in Singapore and Malaysia. He has also curated numerous photographic exhibitions, both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

Nicholas Grossman, who wrote the text on the making-of-the-book, grew up in Boston, Massachusetts before moving to Thailand in 2002. He has spent the last decade working first as a print journalist, mainly as a features writer, and then as an editor for Editions Didier Millet. His recent books for the company include King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life’s Work, Thailand At Random and Chronicle of Thailand: Headline News Since 1946.

 

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Abbas, an Iranian transplanted in France, has dedicated his work to the political and social coverage of the developing southern nations. His major work published in world magazines includes wars and revolutions in Biafra, Bangladesh, Ulster, Vietnam, the Middle East, Chile, Cuba and South Africa, with an essay on apartheid. Since the 1980s, he has been engaged in large projects about religions including Islam, Christianity, Polytheism, Buddhism and Hinduism.

He is the author of several iconic books including Return to Mexico: Journeys Beyond the Mask (1992), Allah O Akbar: A Journey Through Militant Islam (1994), Faces of Christianity: A Photographic Journey(2000), Iran Diary 1971-2002 (2002), Sur La Route des Esprits (2005), In Whose Name? (2009), Ali: Le Combat (2010), and Les Enfants du Lotus (2011).

Abbas’ work has been exhibited in museums, institutions and galleries spanning over 30 countries and four continents.

Aung Pyae is one of the exciting young photographers to emerge in Myanmar in the past decade. He is also one of the four founding members of Myanmar Image Makers (MiM) in Yangon, which holds exhibitions, festivals and workshops teaching and promoting photography, photo-journalism and documentary making in the country.

An award-winning photographer at the Yangon Photo Festival, Aung Pyae honed his craft at photography workshops conducted by the French Institute and American Center in the mid-2000s. He went on to study feature photography at the Institut Francais de Birmanie before undertaking his own award-winning photo-essays and participating in documentary filmmaking projects.

Aung Pyae has been a Senior Photojournalist for the Yangon Media Group, and is now working as the Chief Photographer at Union Daily Newspapers. In 2002, he completed a Bachelor of Science Degree majoring in Chemistry at the University Of Yangon and in 2007 received a Diploma of Computer Art majoring in Animation from the University Of Culture in Yangon.

French-born Bruno Barbey has been a photographer for more than 50 years and is recognised for his free and harmonious use of colour. 

During the 1960s, he was commissioned by Éditions Rencontre in Lausanne to report from European and African countries and he also contributed to Vogue. 

Over five decades, he regularly journeyed across five continents to photograph civil wars in Nigeria, Vietnam, the Middle East, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Kuwait. His work has appeared in major magazines worldwide. 

Barbey began his relationship with Magnum Photos in 1964 and became a full member in 1968, the year he documented the political unrest and student riots in Paris. Between 1979 and 1981, he photographed Poland at a turning point in its history which is captured in his widely acclaimed book Poland. 

Barbey has received many awards for his work, including the French National Order of Merit. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous museum collections. He has also published over 25 books.

Barry Broman began his photographic career in 1962 as an Associated Press photographer in Bangkok. After receiving a BA in political science in 1967 and MA in Southeast Asian studies in 1968 from the University of Washington, he served as an infantry officer in the US Marine Corps in Vietnam and later as liaison officer in Thailand. 

Broman served more than 25 years in the US Department of State, mostly in Southeast Asia, and retired in 1996 after serving as the US Counselor of Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar. Since retiring from government service, he has been actively writing and photographing books and producing documentary films. These include Cambodia: The Land and Its People (2009), Myanmar Architecture: Cities of Gold (2005), Irrawaddy: Benevolent River of Burma (2004) and Spiritual Abodes of Thailand(2005). Among the films he has produced are Flowers of Death (2003), about drugs in the Golden Triangle and Jim Thompson, The Man and the Legend (2006).

In his work, Chien-Chi Chang brings to life the abstract concepts of alienation and connection. The Chain, a collection of portraits made in a mental asylum in Taiwan, caused a sensation when it was shown at La Biennale di Venezia (2001) and the Bienal de Sao Paulo (2002). 

The shocking, nearly life-size photographs of pairs of patients literally chained together resonated with Chang’s jaundiced look at the less visible bonds of marriage. He has treated marital ties in two books – I do, I do, I do (2001), a collection of images depicting alienated grooms and brides in Taiwan, and Double Happiness (2005), a brutal depiction of the business of selling brides in Vietnam. 

For 21 years, Chang has also photographed and videoed Chinese immigrants in New York’s Chinatown, along with those of their wives and families back home in Fujian. Chang joined Magnum Photos in 1995 and was elected as a full member in 2001.

Alain Compost is a French-born wildlife photographer and cameraman with extensive experience in tropical environments. Alain began his career in Indonesia as one of the few international photographers to document the archipelago’s diverse and rapidly disappearing endemic species. 

Alain draws on decades of experience to obtain compelling images and fashion stories under the most demanding conditions, anywhere in the world. His still photography has appeared in National Geographic, International Wildlife, BBC Wildlife, Science and Nature, Paris Match and Figaro. He has also been principal photographer for several books, including Green Indonesia. 

As a 16mm and video cameraman, Alain has worked for Discovery, National Geographic and Animal Planet channels, the BBC, Anglia, Natural History New Zealand, TF1, and Canal+.

In a long and decorated career, photographer and author Michael Freeman has concentrated principally on documentary travel reportage. 

Freeman has been published in all major publications worldwide, including Time-Life and GEO, and has had an enduring 30-year relationship with the Smithsonian magazine, for whom he has shot more than 40 stories worldwide. 

Freeman has also published 120 books, with more than two million copies sold. Much of his work has focused on Asia, beginning in the early days with Thailand, before expanding through other Southeast Asian countries, including Cambodia. 

He has published several books on Angkor and other Khmer sites. 

Freeman has also spent several years photographing across Japan and, more recently, in China. His latest book of documentary reportage is Tea Horse Road (2011), which covers the ancient trade route from Yunnan to Tibet.

Documentary photographer and writer Matt Grace arrived in Asia in 2006 to work with Burmese communities in northern Thailand. 

He eventually returned to London where he studied Photojournalism at the London College of Communication and spent two years as a press photographer before moving to Yangon in 2010. 

In Yangon, he worked extensively with NGOs propping up Myanmar’s ailing public health system while also pursuing personal photographic projects on youth culture in the city. 

At the start of 2012, Matt went back to northern Thailand to help set up a documentary photography and filmmaking center in Chiang Mai. He has recently returned to Yangon and is planning to implement a similar project in Myanmar.

Indonesian photographer Rio Helmi, who has been photographing Asia and writing since 1978, is best known for his documentary work on different cultures and peoples. 

Rio’s work has been featured in international magazines and documentaries and more than 20 large format photographic books. These include his books River of Gems – A Borneo Journal (1991), Bali Style, and his latest, Memories of the Sacred (2010). 

Rio has been based in Bali for more than three decades and is fluent in five languages. He writes in Indonesian and English, and also blogs extensively on a wide range of topics for the Huffington Post. Currently affiliated with Getty Images, he has exhibited worldwide and also has a gallery in Ubud.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Catherine Karnow is renowned for her vibrant, emotional and sensitive style of photographing people. 

Catherine has covered Bombay film stars, victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, Greenwich, Connecticut high society, an Albanian farm family, and many other cultures worldwide. 

In 1994, Catherine was the only non-Vietnamese photo-journalist to accompany General Giap to the northern Vietnam highlands from which he plotted the battle of Dien Bien Phu. She also gained unprecedented access to Prince Charles for a 2006 National Geographic feature. 

Catherine’s work appears in National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Smithsonian, GEO and other publications; as well as several Day in the Life series, Passage to Vietnam, and other books. Her passion for photography also carries into her love for teaching. She teaches National Geographic photo workshops, as well as her own workshops worldwide. Catherine also gives presentations on Vietnam for National Geographic LIVE.

After obtaining his medical degree from Institute of Medicine in Yangon in 2008, Kaung Htet changed career paths and started working as a freelance photographer.

The following year he joined The Myanmar Times – the only newspaper in the country published in both English and Burmese – where he is now the paper’s chief photographer and photo editor.

Kaung Htet’s coverage of major news events throughout Myanmar has been featured by The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, South East Asian Globe, Inside Org, Getty Images and Reuters. He also works for international organizations like OXFAM, FXB and MSF and currently resides in Yangon.

A passion that became a hobby that became a profession. Just 15 years after he attended his first introductory course, Kyaw Kyaw Winn is one of Myanmar’s most respected and awarded photographers. Now, instead of learning photography, he is teaching it as a tutor for the Myanmar Photographic Society, where he has also been awarded Associate, Fellowship and Proficiency honours.

In 2008, Kyaw Kyaw Winn was one of 20 emerging artists in creative fields globally who were invited to participate in the prestigious JENESYS Programme (Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths). He went to live in Tokyo for three months and continued to develop his photographic skills and refine his craft.

Kyaw Kyaw Winn’s photographs have appeared on the covers of The Australian Weekend Travel magazine, Unique Travel magazine in Russia and the book Myanmar the Golden Land. He has also won more than 500 awards in both local and international photographic competitions including the prestigious Grand Prizes from the US, China and Thailand and Gold Medals from Korea, China and Cyprus. Kyaw Kyaw Winn was the ASEAN Young Photographer of the Year in 2007 and 2010.

The Saffron Revolution in Myanmar in 2007 signalled a new direction for the country and a new career for photojournalist Lynn Bo Bo. After gaining valuable experience during the revolution, he joined a local newspaper and covered the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008.

Later that year Lynn Bo Bo joined the exiled media organisation Mizzima, which had been formed in 1998 by three veterans of Myanmar’s 1988 pro-democracy uprising, working as an underground photojournalist. He also covered Myanmar’s 2010 general elections and interviewed pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

In 2011, Lynn Bo Bo joined the Myanmar Post Journal while also continuing to work for Mizzima. Today, Lynn Bo Bo works as a full time photojournalist for the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA). He has been featured many times in the International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, LA Times, New York Times, The Nation, Bangkok Post and other international news organisations.

Steve McCurry has been one of the most iconic image-makers in contemporary photography for more than 30 years. 

His work spans conflicts, vanishing cultures, ancient traditions and contemporary culture alike – yet always retains the human element that made his celebrated photograph of the Afghan Girl such an iconic image.

With scores of magazine and book covers, over a dozen books, and countless exhibitions around the world to his name, McCurry has been recognised with some of the most prestigious awards in the industry. These include the Robert Capa Gold Medal, National Press Photographers Award, and an unprecedented four first prize awards from the World Press Photo contest. 

His published books include The Imperial Way (1985); Monsoon (1988);Portraits (1999); South Southeast (2000); Sanctuary (2002), The Path to Buddha: A Tibetan Pilgrimage  (2003); Steve McCurry (2005); Looking East (2006); In the Shadow of Mountains (2007); The Unguarded Moment (2009) and The Iconic Photographs (2011).

Starting out as an award-winning classical pianist, Min Zayar sold his piano to buy a camera. A few months later he had his first international breakthrough when his photograph of Burmese political icon Aung San Suu Kyi appeared on the front page of the International Herald Tribune during the country’s 2012 by-elections.

Twelve months earlier, Min Zayar had depicted the struggle of giving birth in Myanmar in his first workshop photo-essay. Calling on his background as a medical student, he slipped in unnoticed into the birthing unit of the Yangon General Hospital and produced a series of beautiful and haunting photographs of Burmese women in labour.

Today Min Zayar is based in Yangon and works for Reuters. He has covered many important news stories in Myanmar, being published worldwide in the International Herald Tribune, The Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Guardian and MSNBC. A founder of Myanmar Image Makers (MiM), Min Zayar has also won awards at the Yangon Photo Festival and recently the 9th China International Press Photo competition.

Bangkok-based Athit Perawongmetha is an award-winning photographer with many years experience in news, features and documentaries. 

In 2010, he was selected to exhibit at the Visa Pour L’ Image in Perpignan, France and was nominated for the Visa d’Or Award in the News category. 

More awards followed in 2011. These included 1^st place in the Spot News category and the Award of Excellence in Issue Reporting Picture Story at the 68^th Annual Freelance Picture of the Year competition; 2^nd General News at the China International Press Photo Contest; 2^nd International News Picture Story from the National Press Photographers Association and 3^rd for his photo story exhibited at the 7^th Japan International Photojournalism Awards. In 2012, Athit won National Geographic Thailand’s top honour for his report on the nuclear exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan. He was also selected as “Photographer of the Year 2011” by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand and won the special Jury Prize at the 8^th Japan International Photojournalism Awards.

Raghu Rai first picked up a camera in 1965 aged 23. The following year he joined The Statesman newspaper in India and became their chief photographer for over a decade. In 1971, impressed by Rai’s exhibition at Gallery Delpire in Paris, legendary photographer Henri Cartier Bresson personally nominated him to Magnum Photos. For the next 20 years, Rai contributed trailblazing picture-essays on social, political and cultural themes in Asia. 

In 1972, he was awarded the Padmashree – one of India’s important civilian awards – for his coverage of the war in Bangladesh. And in 1992, he was the U.S. ‘Photographer of the Year’ for his story Human Management of Wildlife in India published in National Geographic. Rai’s photo-essays have appeared in magazines worldwide. He has also produced more than 30 books on India including Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Taj Mahal and Tibet. 

His work has been exhibited in major galleries worldwide over the past 40 years and won many national and international awards. Twenty five of his photographs form part of the permanent collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. He was conferred an Officer des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2009.

 

 

Gilles Sabrié is an independent photographer based in Beijing. After years working in television, he switched careers to embrace his true passion, documentary photography.

Since then, he particularly focused on documenting social changes in China. In recent years, Sabrié has turned his attention to Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Mongolia, where he focuses on the social challenges brought by rapid development.

He has produced several widely published stories such as 175 Meters, about the Three Gorges Dam, and The Travelling Opera, a traditional opera troupe in Shanxi.

Sabrié has been published in many publications worldwide including The New York Times, Le Monde, Newsweek, Time, GEO, Le Figaro Magazine, Focus and L’Espresso. He is a major contributor to important photographic books.

Multi-award-winning photographer Sai Kham Lynn has been shooting professionally since 1992. During this time he has won a number of photography awards in Myanmar, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, France, China and the United States.

Recognition of his work includes an honourable mention at the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) second annual Picture This: We Can End Poverty photography competition, and being nominated at the 2011 Humanity Photo Awards for his Pictorial of Shwedagon Pagoda, a series of 12 stunning photographs featured in the Architecture category.

Sai Kham Lynn was born in Taunggyi, the capital city of Shan State. He currently teaches photojournalism at the National Management College in Yangon.

Dominic Sansoni is based in Sri Lanka and has worked as a professional photographer since 1980. He has published several books and his most recent publications have been two books on Mauritius, Colour in 2010 and Incognito in 2011. Recent personal projects have been the documentation of the vernacular architecture of South India, and a study of ‘Sacred Space’ in Sri Lanka. He is always fascinated by how people live; their private space and sense of style within a home. This curiosity and enthusiasm has taken him down many paths and is humbled by how often he is allowed to intrude into people’s homes and share their personal space.

Malaysian photographer SC Shekar is renowned for his portraiture and ethnographic images, which he has been exhibiting since 1985.

He began his career as a photojournalist and has travelled extensively throughout Asia, focusing mostly on Southeast Asian communities. He recently finished an extensive photographic series on Myanmar after visiting the country many times during the past decade. These images will be published in a new book later in 2013.

Shekar was also commissioned by the Indian government to document Emerging India in a series of photographs which are now being displayed at Indian Consulates and High Commissions around the world.

His work has been featured in many international publications and books including Our Land Within: Journeys through South-east Asian Communities, Daughters Of Asia (2002), Gilding The Lily: Everyday Portraits of Malaysian Women (2007) and Raising Land: The Way of Land & Life in Sarawak (2013).

Photojournalist Soe Zeya Tun was a print reporter for many years before picking up a camera in 2007 at the start of the Saffron Revolution in Myanmar. This enabled him to both write and photograph the revolution as he recorded history in the making as an underground journalist and blogger.

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar and more than 130,000 people died. Again, Soe Zeya Tun used his writing and photographic skills to bring the disaster to the attention of the world. He became a full-time photojournalist in 2009 and is working for Reuters, where he covers daily life and political events.

Soe Zeya Tun was a finalist in the Reuters ‘Photojournalist of the Year’ Competition in 2012, won ‘The Best Photo Essay’ award at the Freedom Film Festival 2012, and was awarded a special prize from Myanmar’s Ambassador of France at the 2013 Yangon Photo Festival.

Tara Sosrowardoyo started his career in photography in 1977 as a stills photographer in the Indonesian film industry.

A joint or sole contributor of images to many books, Tara has also been featured in publications worldwide such as The New York Times, Time, GEO, Asiaweek, Newsweek, Marie Claire, and The New Yorker. He has shot multiple TIME (Asia) magazine covers and many portraits of influential figures in politics, business and the arts in Southeast Asia.

Tara has participated in numerous photography exhibitions in Indonesia and abroad. He has held solo exhibitions at the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne, Australia (1995); Gedung 28 in Jakarta, (2002); Valentine Fine Art gallery in Kuala Lumpur (2003) and at Zinc Gallery in Kuala Lumpur (2010). Tara is based in both Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.

Christopher Horace Steele-Perkins is a Myanmar-born British photographer and member of Magnum Photos best known for his images of Africa, Afghanistan, England and Japan.

Starting as a freelance photographer in 1971, his first foreign work took him to Bangladesh in 1973. Six years later, he published his first book – The Teds – and began working extensively in the Third World.

Over the following decades, his work won several awards including the Tom Hopkinson Prize for British Photojournalism (1988); the Oscar Barnack Prize (1988) and the Robert Capa Gold Medal (1989). His work is in the collection of the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museums, and the National Museum of Film and Photography (FNAC).

Chris’s most recent books include England, My England, a personal retrospective of work shot in England over the last 40 years, and Fading Light, a portrait of British centenarians. Today, he works mainly in Japan and England.

Marine and wildlife photographer Nat Sumanatemeya is renowned for his haunting and strikingly beautiful underwater imagery. Born in Bangkok in 1970, he graduated from Thammasat University with majors in Journalism and Mass Communication in 1994.

Sumanatemeya quickly started applying his skills as a photographer and writer for the Tourism Authority of Thailand where he wrote and photographed for their monthly magazine Osortor.

During this period he gained a reputation for his outstanding marine and underwater photography. Today, his work remains focused on the natural world and marine environment, and his underwater shots featured in the book on Thailand: 9 Days In The Kingdom.

In 2008, Melisa Teo left behind a successful career in book publishing to establish herself as a globetrotting photographer.

Fulfilling a dream that had consumed her life since she bought her first camera, she embarked on a journey through the spiritual worlds of Buddhism, Hinduism and Santeria, imaginatively interpreting light and shade and creating multi-layered photographs of great depth and beauty.

This body of work was showcased in her new book Light From Within (2012) and through a solo exhibition at Jas Gallery in Paris, during the 2012 editions of the Parisian photo festivals Mois de la Photo-OFF and Photo Saint Germain des Prés.

Paris followed her 2012 solo exhibition at The Cathay Gallery and Dark Light, a joint exhibition with the photographer Abbas at 2902 Gallery the previous year, both in Singapore.

Burmese photographer and documentary filmmaker Thet Htoo has covered political, social and environmental issues in Myanmar for many years, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s by-election campaign and sectarian unrest in Rakhine State.

This and other work has seen Thet Htoo featured extensively in The Myanmar Times, TIME, The Nation, Wall Street Journal and many other international news organisations as a staff photographer for the European Press Photo Agency.

His photography has also been widely exhibited, including his acclaimed Sketch With Light charity exhibition which was opened by Aung San Suu Kyi at the National League for Democracy headquarters in 2011.

Thet Htoo is represented by the press agency Zuma Press. He is also documentary filmmaker for Burmese and international media agencies.

Born in Belgium, John Vink studied photography at the fine arts school of La Cambre in 1968 and began working as a freelance journalist three years later.

He first came to public attention in 1986 when awarded the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for Water in Sahel, a two-year documentary project on water management involving migrant and sedentary populations of the Niger, Mali, Burkina-Faso and Senegal.

From 1987 to 1993, Vink worked on Refugees in the World, an extensive statement about refugee camp life in India, Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, Iraq, Malawi, Bangladesh, Angola and others. Community life in the mountainous regions of Guatemala, Laos and the Georgian Caucasus was also chronicled in Peuples d’en Haut.

Vink has been based in Cambodia since 2000. He documents land issues and other social issues, including the Khmer Rouge trials. In 2012, he published Quest for Land for the iPad, compiling 11 years of work on land issues in Cambodia. He became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1997.

Michael Yamashita has been shooting for the National Geographic magazine since the 1980s. The multi award-winning photographer is known for epic stories that cover the landscapes and legends of Asia. During a glittering career he has published 10 books, including: Shangri-La (along the tea road to Lhasa) (2012); The Great Wall From Beginning to End (2007); New York: Flying High (2007); Zheng He – Tracing the Epic Voyages of China’s Greatest Explorer (2005); Japan – The Soul of a Nation (2002); Marco Polo – A Photographer’s Journey (2002); Mekong – A Journey on the Mother of Waters (1995); In the Japanese Garden (1989); A Pictorial Tribute to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and Lakes (1988), Peaks and Prairies: Discovering the U.S. Canadian Border (1984).

In addition to photography, Yamashita is also an award-winning filmmaker, producing the feature documentary The Ghost Fleet about China’s Zheng He, and a National Geographic Channel documentary on Marco Polo. When not traveling, Michael Yamashita lives with his family in rural New Jersey, where he maintains a studio and is an active volunteer fireman.

Co-founder of the Myanmar Street Photographer Society, photojournalist Ye Aung Thu has been widely featured in international newspaper and magazine publications.

After starting out as a blogger in Myanmar, Ye Aung Thu began working for the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news organisation. In recent years, his photographs have appeared in publications as diverse as The Guardian, TIME, New York Times, The Nation, Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune.

From 2008 to 2012, Ye Aung Thu worked as a freelance photojournalist and Chief Executive Photographer for the Myanmar Post Global Journal. During that time, he achieved major success when his images of Aung San Suu Kyi on the 2012 Myanmar election trail were featured extensively across the AFP network. Ye Aung Thu’s short film and photo-essays on hot air ballooning have screened worldwide on CNN.