Home Front cover PHOTO ESSAYS About Letters Contact Shop LIFE FORCE
The magazine of the art-form of the photo-essay “A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine.  Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
Oct 2013 back issue
7 Days in Mayanmar
by Catherine Karnow  
Sisters take the ferry across the Yangon River to Dala, a small and poor township on the other side of the river.
Twins Chozin Thar and Chozin That wait their turn to be photographed in a photo studio, Yangon, Myanmar.
A family comes to make an offering at Shwedagon Pagoda, the oldest pagoda in the world, and a deeply important place for Burmese Buddhists.
In the very center of Yangon, Sule Pagoda, built over 2500 years ago, and named for the spirit Sularata, was the rallying point for both the 1988 and 2007 political uprisings. The majority of the Burmese are Buddhist. The mosque and the church indicate the two other main religions, with Muslims making up 6-10% and Christians 4%.
Downtown Yangon, a colorful bus advertising LineArt Charmant glasses crosses Maha Vandula street.
Seen through the mesh curtain of a tea shop, people walk past Yangon's colonial buildings.
At Moe 3 teashop, in a mostly Islamic township in Yangon, Hlwan Moe lifts a samosa-like pastry out of the hot oil.
Yoga is relatively new in Myanmar. In Maha Bandula park, during a daily morning class, a student strains to see what the teacher is doing.
On 19th street in Chinatown, dozens of restaurants, only open at night, serve a huge variety of items on skewers.
Moh Moh Myint Aung is perhaps Myanmar's most famous actress, winning five Burmese Academy Awards.
One of Myanmar's most famous astrologers, Aye Kyu Mon does readings for members of Yangon's elite.
Originally Yangon's most prestigious photo studio in its 1950s heyday, this once-illustrious place has lost most of its business to the quick snapshot digital place across the street.
Nuns prepare to go walk the streets with their begging bowls. A daily and important ritual in the lives of monks and nuns is the collecting of rice and other alms each morning. There are about 30,000 Buddhist nuns in Myanmar, and ten times that many monks.
Along Strand Road, decrepit British buildings point to Burma's colonial past. Yangon has the highest number of colonial buildings of any city in Southeast Asia, but they are under threat of being torn down by the government.
At Yangon's famous and popular Junk Market, U Aye Ko, 57 years old, has been repairing watches since 1979.
A staff girl rows to shore after her work day at Happy World amusement park in Yangon.
Yoga, Mahala Bandola park. To know more about Catherine Karnow Photography, please "like" her fan page and receive updates on upcoming workshops, publications, photography tips, as well as news and other events: Facebook To take a Photo Workshop from Catherine Karnow, visit: catherinekarnowphotoworkshop.com
Back to menu
These photographs were shot on assignment for 7 Days in Myanmar, a book project comprised of 30 photographers who all shot in the capital, Yangon, and country-wide for exactly one week. The gorgeous coffee table book, published by the distinguished Didier Millet Editions in Singapore, will be published in December. Photographers came from all over the world, including seven from Magnum Photos, and there were three of us from National Geographic. I stayed in Yangon, and photographed high society, street life, food, colonial architecture, the river and its ferries, temples and yoga. Burma is a country fast emerging from the dark years of a brutal totalitarian regime, in which the country's hero, Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest for over fifteen years.
Back to current issue