Project Info:
In early 2004, I was made aware of a ten-day tour going to North Korea, organized by the Korean Friendship Association. This tour had the added benefit of allowing journalists to accompany and would involve extensive travel throughout North Korea. Tours of North Korea are usually limited to very specific tourist stops and very little to no interaction with the North Korean public, this tour had a little bit more flexibility in sites visited as well as the possibility to interact with locals on a limited basis.
As a photojournalist, I try to keep an open mind and an open eye. Much has been written about the various problems in the North Korean regime. This tour would obviously not be showing us any such dire situations and no matter how controlling a dictatorship is, they cant control everything at all times. That said, having covered and documented some of these issues I was more interested in the daily hum drum lives of North Koreans, who, generally put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us. There is a minds eye picture in the world of North Korea as a ruthless military state, its citizens foaming at the mouth, bent on the destruction of the west. This view has great advantage from a military stand point and making a military strike much more palatable for the outside world. A similar strategy was used to great effect not too many years ago with devastating results for the average citizen just trying to make ends meet.
I decided to tackle my introduction to North Korea at face value and present what I saw how I saw it, without embellishment leaving it up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions keeping my preconceived ideas firmly pushed to the back of my mind.
Biography:
Nayan Sthankiya is an East Indian visual journalist raised in Canada. For the last 6+ years he has been based primarily in Asia covering breaking news as well as political, social, cultural and environmental stories on assignment as well as self-generated. He has been commissioned and completed assignments throughout the globe.Born in Uganda, Africa to East Indian parents, forced to flee during a brutal military dictatorship learning first hand at a very young age the importance of media, the image and it’s role as a witness, its ability to foster dialogue and in that dialogue effect positive change.
He studied multi-media arts at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He slowly gravitated away from fine arts to photography after spending a year lobbying the Chinese government for the release of a wrongly imprisoned South Korean photojournalist, Seok Jae-hyun, arrested while documenting North Korean refugee’s in China. He again saw first hand the power of the image to educate, inspire and motivate.
He was asked to undertake disaster missions with the Korean Medical Association to Aceh and Pakistan, receiving a commendation for his work. He also spent time traveling throughout North Korea documenting the Korean Friendship Association. He was Chief video editor producing, shooting and editing, with a team of 10 people, 20, 5min situational ESL videos a month over a 12 month period, shot through-out Daegu, South Korea. He was in India invited to teach various aspects of photography, photojournalism and multimedia in the hill station town of Ooty in the mountains of Tamil Nadu. Most recently he has undertaken a longterm project starting a new media NGO producing compelling multimedia content for other NGO’s in India.
His images have appeared in publications world wide, National Geographic Korea, New York Times, L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal Asian Magazine, Financial Times, Asian Geographic, Internazionale, The Guardian, Village Voice, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, L’espresso, Joongang Ilbo, Korea Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times Magazine.