Category: Photography
There was a time capitalism and communism battled each other. I am of course simplifying the conflict by a whole lot but that was how most of the world saw it then and even now.
I was at the Tate Modern in London recently. Inside the museum, there is a room filled with communist propaganda material presented as art. I stood in the middle of the room thinking how complete the defeat of communism was. So complete, the free society that we (I?) live in now allows us to appropriate hard communist material extolling the masses to embrace communist values as merely an expensive artistic curiosity.
Forty or thirty years ago, these posters were part of a culture war, which itself was part of a real war. Now, well, they are something you sell on eBay, hang on the wall because it looks pretty, or even copy and mass produce them in the name of profit.
I spent quite some time there feeling the same way I felt as if I had wandered the ruins of ancient ruins in Cambodia or Myanmar, or artifacts in the Met or the Lourve. It was a feeling of wonder of times so different from ours.
London is almost always, almost everywhere under surveillance. But the authority misses a spot here. This is at the Seven Dials.
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[2731] A library in Inwa
There is an old wooden Buddhist monastery in Inwa. And inside it is a library-school.
The sun was setting and I was late. I was the only foreigner on the boat crossing the river from Inwa to the other side. As I was making myself comfortable on the boat, a local came on with his bicycle.
I thought, the man and his bicycle would make a nice photo. This turned out to be one of my favorite photographs from my trip to Burma.
Inwa or Ava used to be the capital of various competing Burma kingdoms but in 1839, an earthquake struck the region. Inwa was abandoned for Amarapura soon after and now, it is a sleepy village. Judging by the surrounding, the main economic activities are agriculture and tourism. There is not much else there.