Chance meeting

An old student Zin Myoe Sett had set up a meeting with the big wigs of the Myanmar Photographic Society. Christophe Loviny had briefly dropped in to give me an invitation to thier opening at the France Institute of the show?”Aung San Suu Kyi, The Burmese Way to Democracy”. They say the rains in Yangon start on the 20th May. The clouds had obviously not read the script.

Burmese opposition?politician and General Secretary of the?National League for Democracy?(NLD) in Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) at the French Institute in Myanmar where she was inaugurating the photo exhibition "Aung San Suu Kyi, The Burmese Way to Democracy". Photo (c) Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Author: Shahidul Alam

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018. A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. His seminal work “The Struggle for Democracy” contributed to the removal of General Ershad. Former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the Drik agency, Chobi Mela festival and Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world. Shown in MOMA New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Royal Albert Hall and Tate Modern, Alam has been guest curator of Whitechapel Gallery, Winterthur Gallery and Musee de Quai Branly. His awards include Mother Jones, Shilpakala Award and Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dali International Festival of Photography. Speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, TEDx, POPTech and National Geographic, Alam chaired the international jury of the prestigious World Press Photo contest. Honorary Fellow of Royal Photographic Society, Alam is visiting professor of Sunderland University in UK and advisory board member of National Geographic Society. John Morris, the former picture editor of Life Magazine describes his book “My journey as a witness”, (listed in “Best Photo Books of 2011” by American Photo), as “The most important book ever written by a photographer.”

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