unseen mae la: Eh Doh Soe

Eh Doh Soe

I am from a large village of over 800 people. We used to have wonderful concerts. We would build a stage in the center of the village and many people would sing. I sang religious and love songs. Many people would come to watch us perform.

In 2006, Burmese soldiers burned down my village. We fled into the jungle. Some people eventually went back to rebuild their homes but my family was too afraid. My parents moved to a new village and I came to the refugee camp. I still sing.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY PHOTOS

Mae La Refugee Camp is home to over 45,000 refugees from Burma. Ethnic Karen make up 97% of the people living in Mae La. The camp is located 6 miles from the Thailand-Burma border and is the largest of 13 similar refugee camps. Mae La established in 1984 is home to an entire generation of people in their 20s who have lived their whole lives in refugee camps. There are 26 schools, 5 community libraries, 24 churches, 5 mosques and 4 Buddhist monasteries inside the camp. Most of Mae La is surrounded by barbed wire and residents have restricted movement outside the camp.

unseenworld

UNSEENWORLD is an innovative international arts project for workers and refugees to describe their lives through photography.

The core of the program is a series of free photography workshops. Workers and refugees receive cameras and photography instruction while engaging in discussions about self-representation.

UNSEENWORLD is an expansion of unseenamerica, a project created in order to add the vision of workers to the vision of society. unseenamerica was conceived 7 years ago by Esther Cohen the Executive Director of the Bread & Roses Cultural Project 1199SEIU, a 30-year old non-profit 501c3.

For more information email: Zoeann.Murphy [at] gmail.com

unseen mae la

Eh Doh Soe

Photographers

Teachers

Mae La Refugee Camp

unseenworld

PROCESS

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