Letters from Burma by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Photos and the Art of Relaxation

Apparently, there are people who actually enjoy the unblinking scrutiny of a camera lens and the relentless glare of flashlights. I am not one of them as I often find it quite exhausting to pose for photographers when there is an insistent piece of work waiting to be completed, or when I am longing for a few quiet minutes with a cup of tea.

But with seasoned professionals who have a clear idea of what kind of pictures they would like and how these could be best achieved in prevailing circumstances, a photographic session provides an opportunity for a welcome period of relaxation, time off in the middle of a frantic schedule.

It is good to sit for photographers who are able to explain precisely what they would like you to do but who, at the same time, remain fully aware that you are a human being with muscles that tire and ache when held in rigid positions, not a robot model with a fixed smile. I like best those occasions when I can read peacefully or prop myself up against a bit of furniture and take a little rest while the camera clicks away unobtrusively.

During a session with two pleasant photographers the other day, I was able to go through almost the whole of "From the Morning of the World," a slim volume of poems translated from the "Manyoshu." Sitting on a verandah in the cool stillness of the monsoon afternoon, I savoured again some of the fa rite lines. It was refreshing to take my mind off the rate of inflation, and instead, to dwell on images of winter mist hanging low over blue reed beds and wild ducks calling "chill, chill " to each other. The description of a flowering orange tree blanching a backyard is a soothing change from an analysis of the yo-yoing of the value of the Burmese currency. And compared with the latest reports on the harassment of NLD members, a man riding "haggard on the jet black horse under the scarlet shine of autumn leaves on Kamunabi," presented a relatively tranquil vision.

A poem by a priest provided enough food for thought to take me through a fair part of the photographic session:

With what should I compare this world ?
With the white wake left behind
A ship that dawn watched row away
Out of its own conceiving mind.

The whole world no more than mere spume and those busy cameras clicking away trying to capture and preserve on celluloid a transient fleck of existence.

From where does man's passion for recording people and events spring? Did cave dwellers paint hunting scenes to pass an idle hour or was it the fulfillment of an unconscious need to immortalize their deeds for posterity? Or was it an attempt to communicate to others their view of life around them, an embryonic form of media activity?

What are newspapers, radio, television, and other means of mass communication all about? Some who put more emphasis on the mass than on the communication might say cynically that these are simply about making money by catering to the public taste for sensationalism and scandal. But genuine communication constitutes a lot more than mere commerce in news, views and information.

During the year since my release from house arrest, I have met hundreds of journalists, both professional and amateur. There were days when I had to give so many interviews in quick succession, I felt a little dazed. There were times when I was so tired I was not able to do much more than repeat the same answers to the same questions, feeling very much like a schoolgirl repeating a lesson in class. There have been agonising sessions when language difficulties make it a struggle for the interviewer and myself to communicate with each other. Then there are those sessions when perception, rather than language, is the problem and questions puzzle while answers are misunderstood and are sometimes misrepresented to the extent that there is little in common between what was said and what appears in print. It all shows that communication between human beings is interesting, frustrating, exhilarating, infuriating intricate, exhausting- and essential.

Experienced professional journalists can make even the last interview of a gruelling day more of a relaxation than an ordeal. They know how to put their questions so that new facets appear to an old situation and talking to them becomes a learning process. They combine thorough, inquiring minds. with an integrity and a human warmth that make conversation with them stimulating and enjoyable. Good photographers and good journalists are masters in the art of communication, with a talent for presenting as accurately as possible what is happening in one part of the world to the rest of the globe. They are a boon to those of us who live in lands where there is not freedom of expression.