Unbroken Friendship

Yu Yu is a former photojournalist who until recently worked for a Myanmar newspaper. She has now left her job to focus on independent documentary photography.

She has also worked as a schoolteacher in Meiktila, a city in central Myanmar infamous for ethnic violence. In 2013, violent clashes between Buddhists and Muslims there, left dozens death and more than 12 000 displaced, primarily Muslims.

Yu Yu believes that religious intolerance is mainly a tool used by political powers to foment instability and maintain power by sowing division. In her experience as a schoolteacher, she saw few examples of intolerance. Instead, she was most impressed by interfaith friendship. And so she has made a series of double portraits, showing Buddhist and Muslim friends in Meiktila. She she says her goal is “to show the long-standing connection between the two religious communities.”