"BURMA IN TRANSITION" BOOK PROJECT

About the Project: The country that has drawn me back most often is Burma, one of the world’s poorest and most isolated places. I first went in 1987 on the one-week visa. After a frenetic trip, it wasn’t so much the monks and pagodas that haunted me, but the faces of the Burmese, painted in white, often smiling. I wanted to find out more about who they really were, plagued by a corrupt government and international sanctions. Despite a travel boycott, I decided to return in 2000. The military now called the country 'Myanmar' and was no less repressive but allowed me to stay longer and travel more freely. The result was the multimedia web site Burma: Grace Under Pressure, which won awards and was seen by millions.

Fast forward to 2011, when the US Embassy hired me to teach photojournalists in Yangon. I got on the plane that May with a tourist visa, worried that my name might be on a blacklist at customs. I did not know that the dictatorship was beginning to relax censorship and free political prisoners. There was still not one picture of ‘The Lady’, anywhere, and no one talked about her. By early 2012, all that had changed. It was amazing to witness one of the first rallies where Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party were allowed to appear in public. The Irrawaddy News and Foreign Policy Magazine published my stories of events in Burma. Some of the photographs were chosen for exhibit by Fotofest Cincinnati in their Reporting Back 2012 event. I returned yet again in 2013. My camera focused on capturing daily life, from the cramped streets of the colonial capital of Yangon, to dusty markets in Mandalay, to Muslims in Meikhtila, and river life in Pathein.

Kickstarter Link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/834882042/burma-in-transition

NEED MORE INFO ? CONTACT: hillerphoto@gmail.com