[Leica] Myanmar with the Nikon V1

[benedenia at gmail.com (Marty Deveney)]

On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:22 PM, Nathan Wajsman <photo at frozenlight.eu> 
wrote:
> Thanks for the link, Jayanand. Interesting. Although I must confess I take 
> some issue with his statement that "since the country is going to change 
> in the coming years, visit now". I don't see how a change for the better 
> would make the country less deserving of a visit. Unless he means that a 
> change from the current dictatorship to democracy will be a change for the 
> worse?

I've been to Myanmar.  The loss of cultural identities (I use the
plural because there are hundreds of identifiably separate ethnic
groups in the country) in Myanmar has already started with increased
external influence.  It will be accelerated greatly by further opening
up.  Irrespective of the motives or causes behind it, the more closed
a country is the less they are open to cultural homogenisation.
Myanmar is an amazing place, and even if the west doesn't like its
current politics/government, that the country has retained the
authenticity of their cultures is something to admire in my opinion.
Bhutan has also done it, although in a way that most outsiders find
more acceptable, although they have their problems too.  This all
might be driven, however, by a personal moral difficulty that I have,
having been born in and continuing to live in, and benefit from, a
country founded on the principle of terra nullius and claimed by
ongoing genocide, that I feel morally compromised by judging how any
other country is run, irrespective of whether it is a way I agree with
or not.  I prefer to try to help to fix things here before I judge how
others act and work.  These are questions that rarely arise in
socio-political debates, and are even more rarely addressed.

The photos are nice, but they could have been taken with any camera,
and won't make me run to buy a V1.

Marty