The Sule Pagoda, located in the heart of downtown Rangoon, holds a special place in Burmese life. It is more than 2,000 years old, and was the rallying point for Burma’s 2007 pro-democracy “Saffron Revolution. Hundreds of monks and protestors were brutally assaulted here by Burmese soldiers. I show the Sule Pagoda in a completely different context here. I made this photograph almost ten years after the people of Rangoon forced the Burmese military government to begin easing its repressive rule. This is a relaxed, serene image, as people chat on a pedestrian bridge that surrounds the Pagoda. The adjoining structures seem to reach out protectively, as if to shield the bridge, its occupants, and the golden spire of the Sule Pagoda that lends its symbolic identity to the image.