New Series: kids Were alright - 2013v2023

Series: the kids Were alright - 2013v2023

These 2013 pre-coup photos taken in Myanmar are randomly combined with 2023 post-coup text posted by contemporary resistance fighters.

the kids Were alright - Myanmar 2013v2023

From 1962 to 2012, Myanmar was a military dictatorship closed off from the world. Myanmar opened to the world in 2012. In 2013, when I visited, there was so much hope. Cellphones were prevalent, and the kids absorbed everything from the web. The kids were creatively combining every influence. They mixed Myanmar’s traditional thanaka face paint with modernity. I was inspired because I knew - the kids are alright - and amazing.

In 2021 the junta again seized power in a coup. Massive peaceful protests were brutally put down and un-armed civilians were slaughtered. The People's Defense Armed Forces (PDF) was created to be the armed wing of the National Unity Government. Many youths joined the war against the military.

Ten years after I took photos of these marvelous kids, I wondered where they are now. In this series, diptychs juxtapose 2013 images with 2023 words from contemporary resistance fighters.

the kids Were alright - Myanmar 2013v2023 (click for portfolio)

More Myanmar Information

Myanmar News:
Myanmar Now
Irrawaddy
Mizzima
Frontier Myanmar
Free Burma Rangers

Human Rights Organizations:
Burma Campaign UK
Clear View (Myanmar)
Mutual Aid Myanmar
Baydar Collective

kids Were alright Other Portfolios Resume

Biennials

Ballarat Biennial, Australia
Festival de la Luz 2014 Biennial, Argentina
Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial, NYC

Museums

MoMA Rio de Janeiro Brazil (acquisition)
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Argentina
The Griffen Museum (Boston Globe article)

Awards

Arte Leguna 17: Selecton 2022
International Photo Awards 2008 to 2022
PDN Photo Annual, New York

Chosen Portland's Best Fine Art Photography

Show announcement press release: The Independent is pleased to present photographs by Brad Carlile as our inaugural exhibition. Carlile was one of the winners of the 2009 Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial. The Hearst Biennial judges Peter Lindbergh, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve McCurry, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, & John A. Bennette, III. chose 8 photographers from over 1,000 entries.

Empty hotel rooms from all over the world form the basis of these works, all shot in multiple exposures over time in slide film, with no post-exposure or digital manipulation. The rooms are electric with acidic color, yet spare and detached by virtue of their transient energy and occupation. The perimeters of shifted space and time are blurred, giving a result both classic and contemporary.

Houston Show

De Santos Gallery. Brad Carlile, Contemporary Fine Art Photograph, change highlighted with vivid color without digital manipulation, tempus incognitus — *De Santos Gallery (Houston TX):*
Jose (48"x60"), Bange, Rainie, Sevee, Alb (30"x40")

Reflections

"Brad Carlile's Tempus Incognitus at The Independent took us on a tour of brightly colored hotel rooms, rendered in eerie long exposures."

That year chosen as Best Photography Show of the Year

– Richard Speer, Willamette Week
"The conscious choice to photograph places of transience is less a comment on twenty-first-century ennui and dislocation and more about fixing our complicated relationship with time’s passage to a place we know very well: the universal hotel room."

– Todd Tubutis, Director of Blue Sky Gallery
"The luridness of the shade of green in Brad Carlile’s “Deec" — think limeade laced with gangrene — has to be seen to be disbelieved. Androids may or may not dream of electric sheep. But if dream they do, this is what the green in those dreams must look like."

– Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe
Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic