There is far more to a great photo story than just great photographs. A great photo story has to have meaning and purpose. A great photo story has to matter.
For two weeks starting on January 11, Philip Blenkinsop, Linda Bournane-Engelberth and Nicole Tung will be working young photojournalists to help them find and develop vital stories. The online workshop has been developed as a collaboration between Myanmar Deitta and the VII Academy and forms part of Myanmar Deitta’s Contemporary Documentary Photography Practice program, run annually out of Yangon.
The Myanmar participants come from a range of backgrounds and disciplines, mixing photojournalists from the country’s largest cities of Yangon and Mandalay with anthropologists, filmmakers, and those working in Myanmar’s extensive civil society networks. Stories will come out of Lashio in northern Shan State as well as from Kachin State’s Je Yang Internally Displaced Persons’ camp on the Myanmar-China border. Two photographers will develop stories in Rakhine State, which has found itself in the international news so much over the past few years but suffers from a lack of recognition of coverage by its own local photographers.
All fifteen participants will be led through the process of identifying, researching, planning and shooting projects which shine a light on local stories which should demand our attention and yet exist at a time when a global crisis makes it far too easy for them to be ignored.
Check in with us again between 11th and 24th January when we’ll be sharing images produced by the participants.
