Love the warm orange color which goes so well with the subject matter. Yes very NG and DAH. Really like, 3, 4, 9, 10,and 12

Wendy…They are reading the daily newspaper which is hung up in each station.

Luzz…Glad you are familiar enough with my work to offer me these thoughts ;)

Mark W…Thankyou very much for your thoughts. I completely understand where you are coming from in your worries about imagery that mimics stereotypical thoughts and ideas about a place and it’s people. As you say you are familiar with my work, I hope you already know that I am not the kind of photographer/person that searches to blindly regurgitate negative stereotypes. Possibly some of the wording in the captions could be misconstrued as having a stereotypical bent, however I did try to react as honestly as possible to what I saw, what I was told and what I felt when taking these pictures.

We were not treated warmly in the country as visitors. People authorized to interact with us were polite, but always cool (in emotion).and distant. In the very brief chances that I did have to interact with normal people, they greeted us with inquisitive smiles (see pic 11) and a genuine interest. I was quickly whisked away from these brief situations though. Believe me, if I was given the chance to show a ‘new’ side of NK, I would seize upon it. Thanks again for taking the time to express your thoughts in detail.

Simon G…I would of loved the opportunity to get closer but it was just not possible. I think the pictures echo my feelings of isolation whilst visiting. I felt outside the country, even when I was in it.

Your fan,

Mark.

I followed the presentation of the short videos and some of this images through the other regular channels but this group of images is definitely good!

Hope all is well on the east.
See you soon. Take care.

Armando

I really enjoy your work. There is a lyrical quality to it and it all seems to hold together with a quality that feels yours. I hope you will become a regular “columnist” here.

Ian

Sean, there are some very fine images here. Excellent work!

i laughed when you asked “it depends on if the North Koreans read Burn Magazine”…so, just for fun i Googled your name and North Korea…

on a Google search, Burn came up #1 in connection with your name and NK….above the Globe&Mail etc…

so, if the NK officials have a database with your name in it and run cross references, i would suspect they saw the Burn piece before Patricia did….

cheers, david

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/inside-north-korea-will-these-people-see-change/article1276923/

Credit also to the edit of this to DAH, here on Burn. I sent David about 25 images, a few he cut and the rest he re-organised. This work is still very new to me, so I was completely happy for David to mix and match the images to help me find the voice for this work. It has helped tremendously.

Sydney…Sparsely populated/emptiness is indeed what I felt when I was there. We would travel for hours by train and bus and rarely see a soul out of the window. Official figures on the actual population in NK are quite hard to come by, I believe. Recent food shortages may of taken more of a toll than previously thought, especially on those in the poorer countryside. In the capital of Pyongyang, the streets seemed fairly lively although relatively devoid of traffic. Car ownership is so limited that once we left the capital, we would rarely see any other vehicles on the road. People would walk on the highways from city to city, as inter-city public transport is non-existent. I read that NK citizens require permits to even leave their own town/city.

Bob B…Thanks as ever for your kind words. Is this work a beginning? We shall see. It depends if the NK authorities read Burn magazine! Perhaps they won’t let me back in! I would like to go back as it is a photographer’s paradise there really. It was like stepping back in time to an age of the cold war that has virtually disappeared from our world. Saying that, the working conditions are extremely tough i.e. being constantly watched and quizzed. It was actually quite uncomfortable to be constantly under scrutiny.

Davin…The cult of personality was one of the more disturbing things I experienced during my time there. The reverence given to ‘eternal leader’ Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il was rather overpowering and their faces were everywhere, often accompanied by propaganda that was spewn out on public loudspeakers wherever we went. You couldn’t escape it.

Kathleen… I think you got my feelings pretty much spot on! On all of the days we were woken at dawn, whisked from one monument to the next, never given a chance to breath and take it all in. We were then rushed to our hotel at night, situated on an island in the middle of a river in Pyongyang, again isolated from the rest of the city. My eyes were wide open the whole time!

Patricia