Portraits of Myanmar: Faint Light and Dust Beneath the Pagodas

Myanmar, a country labeled “dangerous” and “mysterious” in the news. But set aside the grand narratives of geopolitics and the filters of stereotypes, and what you find is a real human world made up of millions of individual lives. Taking the lives of ordinary people as its starting point, this book delves into the texture of the land. We record barefoot believers giving away their life savings just to donate a piece of gold leaf beneath a pagoda, and portray Inle Lake’s one-legged fishermen rowing in their astonishing fashion. We look both at the unvarnished, innocent smiles of people making a living on the streets and at the guile and survival strategies poverty breeds in the gray areas. Amid extreme poverty and upheaval, between devout faith and the mire of everyday life, the people of Myanmar are shaping a philosophy of survival that is as raw as it is moving. This is more than a work of foreign reportage. It is a profound reflection on how people rebuild order within themselves in the face of extreme hardship.