BY LOGAN MA
Logan Ma is a first-year China Studies student at SAIS. His photograph, “Afternoon on the U Bein Bridge,” was the winner of the 2019 Perspectives photo contest.
As a child, circumstances limited my opportunities to see the world. Three years before my birth, my parents immigrated from China to Utah after Tiananmen with only a single suitcase. To make ends meet, they waited diner tables, cleaned motel rooms, and—when time allowed—endured the long bus ride to Nevada to staff the Carson City blackjack tables. Travel was a luxury, reserved only for the occasional visit to grandma’s house.
One day, my father found a dusty stack of National Geographic magazines at a garage sale. In those days of scarcity, before the advent of social media – let alone the internet – the images in those iconic yellow-bordered issues became my window into the wider world.
I met some of my idols while sifting through those pages – masters of imagery who created visual spectacles in distant lands far from the confines of our tiny apartment. As I grew older, I found myself especially drawn to those who used photography to convey stories about the world around us, legends like Steve McCurry, whose haunting portrait of the Afghan Girl captured the human toll of warfare, and Dorothea Lange, whose Migrant Mother became an iconic representation of the Great Depression. For these giants, photography was not merely art for art’s sake, but a means to affect social change by emphasizing issues otherwise removed from the public consciousness.
Photojournalists shape the ways in which we view the world. They are uniquely placed to draw attention to what the human eye cannot – or will not – see. Their works give credence to the ageless adage that a picture is worth more than a thousand words. In times like these when trust in media institutions is at an all-time low, when demagogues and dictators twist words, dismiss facts, and perpetuate outright lies, photographs have the power to sear an irrefutable truth into the collective conscience.
This power is more relevant than ever in the face of global climate change. Numbers and figures may communicate scientific facts, but these alone are insufficient. A picture persuades at a more visceral level. One can choose to deny climate change, but cannot unsee images of barren rocks where once stood majestic glaciers or of vibrant villages obliterated by wildfires.
When I captured this picture of Myanmar’s U Bein Bridge, I was merely a traveler passing by. All around me, people went about their daily lives – monks on their way to pray, families returning from the market, fishermen casting their nets. Little did I know that before my eyes, the effects of climate change were already taking root.
Looking back, I was not in a boat when I took this picture, but rather, standing on a dry lakebed no more than twenty feet away from the bridge. This would have been perfectly normal in the dry season, but at that time, the wet season was well underway. Yet the waters were nowhere near as high as they should have been. In hindsight, the monsoon rains were late.
Few countries match Myanmar in terms of vulnerability to climate change. In the larger region around the U Bein Bridge, once predictable rainfall is a thing of the past, wreaking havoc on local livelihoods as farmers struggle to fill water reserves and make ends meet. Should this trend continue, the outcomes will be catastrophic.
This is the reality of living with climate change. Unless we take action, serene scenes like this one on the U Bein Bridge will be only a distant memory, a reminder of what once existed.
Thank you.
Afternoon on the U Bein Bridge
Amarapura, Myanmar
Pedestrians make their way across the U Bein Bridge near Amarapura, Myanmar. Constructed in 1851 from the teak columns of an abandoned royal palace, the bridge is both the oldest and one of the longest teak bridges in the world. During the summer rainy season, rising water levels typically submerge the bridge. In recent years, however, climate change has contributed to reduced and irregular rainfall, threatening the surrounding region with drought.
PHOTO CREDIT: Logan Ma ‘21