Saturday, July 21, 2012

Learning Burmese Is Tough!

Been spending lots of time on my nightshifts working on learning some Burmese, boy is that tough! I found a wonderful online source to learn from, its a set of audio recordings called "Burmese By Ear", highly recommended.

http://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/

It is still tough sledding getting this stuff down, working on numbers, and basic phrases now. I am also reading a couple books on Burma, "Burmese Lessons" by Karen Connelly and a biography of Aung San Suu Kyi by Peter Popham  "The Lady And The Peacock".

Hopefully this effort will help me when I am making photographs of the Burmese refugee families in Mae Sot dump next year. I need to really bare down and learn as much a I can before I fly, I owe it to my subjects and to the photographs. I want so much to create something important and tell the story of these peoples lives with respect, honesty and power. I know I can do this, it will take dedication and hard work, I just have to work hard enough and it will get done! Nothings going to stand in my way.