This photograph, titled “Dancing Mood” and taken at Ngapali Beach, is featured in Zaw Min Yu’s book Alingar. Pic: Zaw Min Yu

THE beauty of Myanmar can be a liability when it comes to photography. The splendour of Shwedagon Pagoda, for example, leads visitors to believe that simply pointing a camera at the stupa and pressing the button is enough to capture its essence.

The result is that most photographs of Shwedagon – not to mention Bagan, Inle Lake, Mandalay Hill and other popular tourist spots – have a certain sameness to them, with little creativity in perspective.

There is, of course, no such thing as purely objective photography. Objectivity is lost as soon as someone picks up the camera and starts making choices about subject matter, what time of the day to shoot and how to frame the photograph.

The luxury of subjectivity increases with the skill of the photographer and
the capacity to carve out enough free time to indulge in the hours of travel, observation and contempla-tion necessary to pursue the craft to the fullest.

One Myanmar native who has decided to dedicate the necessary time to the pursuit of the “perfect” photographic image is Zaw Min Yu. Inspired by the work of his father – movie producer and director U Tin Yu – Zaw Min Yu left Myanmar in his early twenties to study photography in London.

He settled back in Myanmar in early 2001 after more than 20 years in Europe, Asia and Australia, working for a variety of advertising agencies but
also becoming familiar with the work of well-known travel and landscape photographers like Mike Langford of New Zealand.

“When I decided to venture out into landscape and travel photography, the first thing I did was attend Mike Langford’s workshop on travel photography in Sydney and discover many things,” Zaw Min Yu said.

“I also had the chance to go out camping with another well-known landscape photographer. He woke up at 4am to shoot photographs of wild horses passing by, but he wasn’t satisfied with the result. So we camped out for two more days until he made the exact photograph he wanted.

“I thought, ‘Wow. That’s what it takes to be a photographer’,” he said.

This revelation prompted Zaw Min Yu to take his photographic skills out of the advertising studio and on the road, producing a series of books on Myanmar, including A Journey into Bagan (2005).

“For that book, I wanted to depict a day in the life of Bagan, beginning with sunrise and ending with sunset – not only the pagodas but also the lifestyle of people in the region,” he said.

“It was the first time I had the freedom to choose my own photos, to show what I wanted to show. I wanted to show things that haven’t changed in hundreds of years.

“And the book is something I can leave behind. It’s not advertising work. My kids can say, ‘This is what my dad did’.”

In keeping with this desire the leave a definitive legacy, last year Zaw Min Yu opened his own gallery at 98 Inya Road in Kamaryut township in Yangon. The occasion of the gallery’s opening was marked by an exhibition of photographs featured in his most recent book Alingar.

The photos in Alingar were taken during two road trips: The first one in 2006 lasted one and a half months, while the second one the following year took 20 days.

“My aim was to do a really nice book on Myanmar after so many years of taking advertising photos,” he said.

“A swimming pool is a swimming pool, a hotel room is a hotel room, a restaurant is a restaurant, but when you do books like Alingar, it’s reality. It’s not set up. When you do advertising shots, it has to be spotless. It’s all set up, all premeditated. With books, you capture the moment, especially with people. You can’t say to people, ‘Can you do that again?’”

In the introduction to Alingar, Nance Cunningham comments on the lessons of patience and persistence that Zaw Min Yu professes to have learned from Langford and others.

“[Zaw Min Yu] instinctively notes the times when the most exquisite details become visible,” she writes. “If he cannot stop at the moment, he will come back to a place at the right time for as many days as necessary to get the right image. He has been plotting some for years.”

Zaw Min Yu readily acknowledges the debt he owes to Langford and his ilk: “I spent a lot of time to capture the right moment because I’ve seen the time these guys took to make the right photographs.”

“You have to go to bed early, 8:30pm or 9pm at the latest, so you can wake up at 4:30am to get ready for the sunrise shots. You have to check out the location during the day, figure out where the best pagoda is, see where the stairs are so you can climb up in the dark. It’s all about preparation. You have to do the location scouting first,” he said.

While local scenery figures prominently in many of Alingar’s images, this is not landscape or nature photography. People are often present in the photos, and when they are not, their handprint is readily visible in the form of the pagodas, Buddha images and the modest houses they have built.

But in keeping with the traditional subject matter that is so appealing to many westerners, there is little evidence of modern Myanmar in these images. The few reminders of the 21st century – a motorcycle parked at a teashop, car lights squiggling along a dark road in Yangon, power lines passing in front of a pagoda – are never the focal point of the photographs.

For Zaw Min Yu, the essence of the book is represented by a photograph called “The Thirsty Road”, depicting a tree-shaded country lane disappearing into the distance. In the foreground is a tree with a built-in shelf on which rests an earthenware pot filled with water for passers-by.

“In all my travels around the world, I haven’t seen anything like that. But when you travel in Myanmar, you have these water pots that are kept filled for travellers. I wanted to show that this is Myanmar,” Zaw Min Yu said.

“Locals don’t see this clay water pot. But I’ve been abroad for 24 years, so when I came back I saw it as a representation of Myanmar. I try to see things that local people miss because it’s so familiar to them.

“I know I won’t sell this photograph, but it’s not about selling. It’s about showing what I want to show,” he said.

Zaw Min Yu said that for his next project, he is ready to step off the well-trodden path of traditional subject matter.

“I want to do something really, really different, something where I can use all my knowledge, my experience, my life as a photographer,” he said.

He declined to provide too many details, but did suggest that the project would involve studio shots taken in collaboration with a well-known local visual artist.
“People may not like the new photographs, but I’m doing my best. It’s my interpretation,” Zaw Min Yu said.

“As a photographer, I want to create. I want to do something different. Because if you’re a copycat, people will look down on you and your work.”