Art was something that I have always loved but didn’t explore until my retirement in 2012 after 40+ years in medical research. I attended a Fund Your Life Overseas conference in 2014, where I was drawn to a session on stock photography as an interesting fun challenge that I could combine with my love of travel. What started out as mini challenges: getting a photograph accepted, then selling one, getting accepted on more agencies leading to having over 2400 images on Adobe Stock and over $2700 sales in passive income at that agency. For stock I photograph everything from beautifully prepared food to food scrap composting. My best-selling photos tend to be Vermont landscapes and scenes such as testing the maple syrup in a sugar shack. In my travels I am drawn to people engaged in traditional work, crafts and art. Creating portraits of older people whose faces provide a “geography of a life” particularly interest me. Now I look at life and my surroundings through a different lens finding beautiful and interesting light, nature and people wherever I go. Photography and travel make perfect partners and passions for me in my retirement.
Women of Chin Portraits
Facial tattooing of women, once a common tradition in Myanmar's Chin state, has been prohibited since the 1970s. In 2019 I traveled with photographer Kyaw Kyaw Winn, who has passionately been documenting this fading art and its cultural significance. With each passing year, the women who bear these tattoos become more scarce. “Each and every pattern of a facial tattoo among the different Chin Groups is therefore a visual expression of belonging and identity, of the ability to endure pain, of having mastered different stages in live, of being a full member of the community with duties, privileges and status, of a particular beauty perception and – last but not least - of a certain spiritual and super-natural believe” Jens Uwe Parkitny (2017) Marked for Life , Myanmar’s Chin Women and their facial Tattoos
These are selected portraits I took around the remote regions of southern Chin State and the town of Mindat. Most of these portraits are from the Muen group, with a unique pattern of half circles on their face and rune like symbols. The Ubtu group tattoo the entire face with solid black ink, a particular painful practice especially on the eyelids.
