About the Collection
“In Between” is Joshua Van Lare’s long look at Myanmar during a rare opening - roughly a decade (2011 - 2021) when the country could exhale, however briefly. “Wait and see - wait and see” the people would repeat throughout the time he spent living in Yangon during the “democracy years”. The people were right to excercise caution with their optimism. As Bourdain wistfully foretold in his Myanmar episode of "Parts Unknown", the first in that series, "turns out you can put the toothpaste back in the tube".
The work stays at street height: plastic stools and quiet voices, thanaka on cheeks and present eyes. It’s not the spectacle of change so much as the evidence of it - the way a city moves when the future feels possible, and how people tend their days when hope has to be practical. The pictures are unhurried and close, but not consuming. They trade drama for stamina: hands that work, faces that rest, the choreography of markets and ferries, the hush before the cacophony of monsoon rain.
In a place too often flattened into headlines, ignored by the west and exoticized by photographers, these frames insist on the fullness of ordinary life - the humor, the care, the stubborn warmth that outlasts any season or regime. They celebrate what holds: dignity, ritual, generosity; a country’s character written in small gestures. For collectors, the pull is quiet but strong. These images read cleanly across a room and reward slow looking up close. They remind us that resilience is not a slogan - it’s breakfast, it’s the walk to work, it’s a glance that says “we’re still here.” The photographs honor the people who make that true, and invite the viewer to meet them - without distance, without noise, and with the reverence ordinary beauty deserves.
About the Photographer
Joshua Van Lare is an American photographer from New York who has spent most of the last fifteen years living abroad across Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. His work grows out of quiet mornings and honest conversation - those thin hours just after dawn when the city arises and people begin to move. In Myanmar he learned to follow curiosity: sometimes pedaling a bike, sometimes wandering on foot, sometimes catching a ride toward the edges of a map he was determined to know.
Van Lare would sit at tea shops, practice Burmese, share a cheroot, linger over a 3-in-1 coffee or tea, and talk with anyone who welcomed him. Laughter came easily. So did invitations - to walk a little farther, to meet a family, to be known for a moment. If it felt right, he made photos. Other times, Josh let his camera rest and just enjoyed the company. What stayed with him was a warmth he had never experienced elsewhere, a simple, generous openness summed up in a phrase he heard more than once: “I want to know you.” Not a transaction, but an encounter.
The photographs reflect that spirit. They’re made in the heat and heft of monsoon air, amid scents as pungent as shrimp paste and as sweet as Jasmine flowers, with people from all walks of life who elegantly balance joy alongside struggle. Josh tries to honor the everyday grace of those meetings and the simple beauty of daily life, which linger in his conscience - friendship, work, laughter, a glance that says more than words - and to offer the same openness back.