In 2013, Austrian photographer Lukas Birk began collecting photographic material and conducting research on the history of photography in Myanmar. The same year, he founded the first public photographic archive focusing on images taken by local professional and amateur photographers, including Sino-Burmese professionals, the Myanmar Photo Archive (MPA). It contains images from photo studios, private photo albums, official photography, company records, documentary and scientific images, as well as studio accessories, photographic slides and negatives. As of 2023, MPA has produced several exhibitions with materials from their archive comprising more than 30,000 images. Using photographs from the archive, MPA also runs a photobook publishing programme in Yangon.
The archive focuses on the social significance of individual's and families' visual stories rather than the political history of Myanmar.

In the heart of every photograph lays a memory, and in every memory, a whisper of resistance. Lost is a quiet uprising, a testament rendered in shadows and light, grief and grace. Produced, printed, and distributed in Myanmar, Lost is a subtle but profound act of defiance in a country where speaking openly against the military regime remains a dangerous impossibility.

Following the military coup of February 2021, Myanmar plunged into loud protest, violent suppression and silencing. Protest was stifled, voices were crushed, and a fearful quiet blanketed the country. In the face of such systemic violence and repression, open dissent became a perilous proposition. It is in this context that Lost emerges – a publication that dares to speak in symbols, to mourn through metaphor, and to carry the torch of remembrance through carefully curated archival material.
At its core, Lost is a book about death, but not only in the literal sense. It is about the loss of democracy, the erosion of freedom, and the heartbreak of a country made to mourn once again. Yet it is also a book about the persistence of culture, the endurance of faith, and the power of collective memory. Through funeral photography drawn from the Myanmar Photo Archive – a vast repository of vernacular images spanning generations, Lost meditates on the rituals of grief and the many forms of farewell practised across Myanmar’s diverse communities.
These photographs, quiet and arresting, belong to a visual language deeply rooted in Myanmar’s cultural life. They depict funerals not as isolated events, but as vital communal expressions. The scenes are deeply intimate, yet universally resonant: families gathered around a body, wreaths and candles arranged with care, the stillness of a final embrace. They come from Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and animist contexts, reflecting the pluralism that defines Myanmar’s historical fabric.
But the heart of Lost is in its second layer, the written word. Interwoven with these images are a series of obituaries. These are not records in the conventional sense, but fictional narratives inspired by the lives and struggles of those who resisted the military regime in the months following the 2021 coup. The names and ages are real. They belong to the fallen. The words, though imagined, ring with a truth that no censor can suppress.
Each obituary carries the weight of a life cut short, a story never fully told. They speak of sons and daughters, neighbours and teachers, poets and protestors. They speak of hope and courage, of dreams deferred, of the tenacity of those who rose up in defence of freedom.