A stroll in Yangon (2017)

[TIL #16] And a beautiful portrait of a simple man.

This is — travelling back to a few days in 2017. I was on a work trip in a country i knew little about. During my free time, i stepped out of the hotel into the streets of downtown Yangon, in Myanmar, for moments of flânerie.

In French, the verb flâner has synonyms that have a similar beautiful if slightly antiquated resonance: baguenauder, musarder. In English, this translates as taking a stroll or loitering.

Walking around town with no specific aim, wandering with no intention of making a specific image, being available to what happens around you, being mindful of the moment. It is a very pleasant and intense state of mind that emerges at the intersection of relaxation and attentiveness.

These are pictures from my walks in Yangon in December 2017.

(In 2021, a military coup overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, marking an authoritarian step back from the progress of the country towards democracy. The regime’s record in terms of human rights is catastrophic, as reported by Amnesty International.)

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Tales of Ink and Light are short stories and poems told with words (the ink) and photographs (the light). Every other week, I share a photograph and the story behind it, as well as brief thoughts on photography and the creative process.

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The open book of the moment

In my apartment, i use a couple of small easels to keep photobooks open for a few days or occasionally a few weeks. It is a way to engage into a longer dialogue with some of the images. And at the moment, one of the open books is …

This is the first book published by Hoxton Mini Press. One day, Martin Usborne, photographer and the co-founder of the publishing house, noticed an an old man that appeared to be ‘so at odds’ with the crowd of the neighbourhood, and a conversation started that over time turned into friendship. The resulting book is a beautiful, slow portrait of a man. Here’s a passage from the concluding words of the book:

Of the many things I learned from him, I think one stands above all else: see other people as they are. To meet a stranger directly and with clear eyes, as he did on a daily basis on his many rambling walks across East London, requires a level of openness that few of us have, but all of us should strive for.

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Thank you for reading the Tales of Ink and Light.