Seeds of Resilience

This project chronicles the Karen Indigenous people's ongoing struggle for self-determination in Myanmar—a struggle that, despite being the world's longest civil conflict, remains largely unknown to the global public.

For more than 70 years, successive Burmese military governments have waged campaigns of repression and occupation of the Karen's ancestral territory. The inhabitants of these areas have resisted continuous human rights violations while striving to safeguard their environments, traditional practices, and identities.

In the aftermath of a military coup in 2021, the Myanmar Armed Forces launched a major offensive to seize the last autonomous enclave in the Salween River basin, putting the survival of the Karen heritage at risk. Over 100,000 internally displaced persons have been sheltering in the region's lush forests after fleeing their homes due to relentless waves of airstrikes.

When land is the basis of life, conflict and forced displacement strip people of their humanity. It disrupts the profound relationship of Karen communities to their ancestral territory, which sustains their culture and livelihoods and serves as a source of resilience in the face of adversity.

Matias Bercovich

Matias Bercovich (born in Barcelona, Spain) is a documentary photographer and National Geographic Explorer. His current long-term work focuses on the intersection between cultural survival, ethnic conflict, and environmental conservation in Karen State, Myanmar. Born into a family of photographers, Bercovich grew up surrounded by images and developed a passion for photography from an early age. Between 2013 and 2017, he began formal study of visual storytelling through programs in Argentina and Spain, while also achieving a degree in photography from the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands. His work has been published by international media outlets such as National Geographic, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Clarín, PDN, and Frontier Magazine. In 2020, he was nominated by the World Press Photo Foundation for the Joop Swart Masterclass and awarded by the National Geographic Society with an Exploration Grant. In parallel with his personal projects, he has been teaching aspiring photographers, visual journalists, and social activists storytelling workshops in Spain and Myanmar, both independently and in collaboration with non-profit and community-based organizations.