Burmese Pantomime of Barnaby Rudge

April 2015, Yangon, Myanmar
I considered calling this series of photographs Barnaby Rudge after Dickens’s early historical novel about the Gordon Riots, but it seemed like a bit of a stretch (though it still seems appropriate to me despite my inability to explain exactly why)  and would likely be misunderstood in light of the current revolutionary activity in Baltimore.   I doubt that even the few people alive who have read the book would understand the association I intended. (The novel's central character is a bit of a fool who finally finds his true calling in life as the natural born leader of a mob.) These pictures were made a couple of weeks ago in Yangon with the help of some friends there, and employ a few props and masks that were obtained rather cheaply in the street.  The setting is an outside wall of a Judicial Court building a few blocks from where I was staying.  As well as they could, I asked those posing to think of themselves as dancers in a revolutionary pageant.