Art on the Burma road

How Hollywood depicted the Burma Road

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Burma Road

Pianma

Tengchong

Heshun

Introduction

There are many pictures of the Burma Road.

Most of them made by journalist travelling the road. National Geographic wrote two large articles on the road with many pictures.

Others made by American military advisors or the Signal Corps of the US Army.

One of them was Arthur Rothstein.

The Chinese themself hardly made any pictures of the road at the time; it was something one would not waste expensive and scarce photographic film on.

I do not know of any explicit artwork made on the Burma road but later on some of the pictures made of the Burma road ended up in art collections.

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The Burma Road by Arthur Rothstein (1945) International Center of Photography ©1

In his early twenties Arthur Rothstein joint the team of photographers documenting the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. ©1

As official photographer of the Signal Corps Arthur Rothstein made this picture of Roosevelt and Churchill at the Quebec Conference in 1942. ©1

In 1940 Arthur Rothstein joined the United States Army as a photographer in the Signal Corps and was posted at the end of the war in Asia.

After being discharged from the army in 1945, he remained in China working as the chief photographer for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).

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