Student Profile: Sloan Breeden

Story by Jennifer Lee

Sloan Breeden, 28, discovered his life passion while teaching English and trekking through Chinese territory for two years.

Having studied Chinese for six months while he was there, he equipped himself with a camera and scoured the country, stirring a passion for concerned documentary photography. When he returned to the United States, he decided to study more about his newfound passion at the University of Texas and entered into the master's program for photojournalism.

As Breeden finishes his last coursework this semester, he is preparing to go to China once again to fulfill his master's report requirement with funding from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, an organization that funds student and professional photographers interested in concerned documentary photography.

"It was a project I was going to do anyways, but it's nice to have funding and recognition for it," he said. "And I get to do a show in the end for the Alexia Foundation to present the work."

Breeden was one of 48 people from 10 countries that sent a proposal to the foundation. He was one of three people to receive an award of excellence, which included a $500 cash grant and a $1,600 scholarship that would help pay to study during the fall semester at the Syracuse University London Centre.

He declined the scholarship but accepted the grant, which would help pay for three-fourths of his plane ticket to China. His project would be a continuation of something he started in the summer of 2005, when he spent two months in the Nu Jiang area, a river valley that borders Burma in the Yunnan Province in the southwestern part of China.

The river valley holds 7,000 species of plants and 80 rare species of animals. The Nu River is considered to be one of the last pristine rivers in China, and the United Nations has declared it a World Heritage Site.

Breeden is interested in this area because the Chinese government plans to build 13 dams, an act that would force up to 50,000 ethnic people, most of which are farmers and herders who can't speak Chinese, to relocate.

"China is developing at a breakneck pace--faster than any country. You blink, and you open your blinds in Shanghai or somewhere, and there are new skyscrapers. It's that whole push towards modernization and economic growth that's spurning all these projects where all these isolated rural areas are getting shafted and being left behind," he said. "The electricity is not going to go to these people; it's going to go to Shanghai and Beijing and the economic growth that needs that development. There's a lot of powerful interest pushing, you know? The people standing up against these guys are against pretty tremendous odds."

Breeden plans on being there from three to six months, posing as a backpacker, teaching English whenever he runs out of money and "flying under the radar" from the Chinese government.

"It's kind of necessary over there," he said. "If you come in there and approach situations like that with lots of cameras and start asking sensitive questions, you have to be careful of where you are."

He will try to find a student translator from Kunming University who comes from the Lisu, Nuzu or Dulongzu ethnic group that live in the river valley because it was hard for him to get in-depth information from people who didn't know how to speak Chinese when he went there during the summer.

"I had these images, and I could find basic information, but I couldn't really get deep, serious interviews from people, so that's an important component I want to have when I go back," he said. "I want to get a greater understanding of the way of life, the agricultural methods and the traditional lifestyles that we've lost."

He would like to have a substantial amount of work to publish when he returns to the U.S., but his ultimate goal is to help spread word about the project.

"I absolutely want to get it disseminated through as many people as possible to raise awareness of the issue," Breeden said. "When I came back last time, I had all these images, but I didn't run them anywhere and it didn't get much exposure, so that's definitely a very, very, very important thing."

A "travel buddy" first informed him about the river valley, saying it had just opened for foreigners and gave him the tip that the government was planning on building the dams there. After doing some research on the area, he decided to try living there himself. He lived in the villages, hiked mountains, slept on dirt floors and lived with chickens.

"I didn't get bird flu, which is good," he said after a pause. "But it's a really interesting area. I mean, I traveled for a month and a half and didn't see another Westerner, so it's kind of pristine and untouched. It's actually staunchly Catholic. They have all these Catholic churches that the Jesuits left in the 1800s, I guess, when they passed through. They're so isolated that it didn't get destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. A lot of them didn't, so if you go by the mountainside, you see these beautiful Catholic churches. It's kind of strange."

Since he learned a few more things since he came back to Austin, Breeden plans to use programs such as Final Cut Pro to cut the images, including sounds from the river valley and interviews with the people, to "give it a three dimensional feel."

"It's such a beautiful place that it's hard to translate into still image," he said. "It's one of the most bio-diverse regions on the planet, so I think having all the sound, and maybe some of the moving images, will show that."

Breeden also received the Outstanding Teacher Award, which gives its recipients $500, during fall 2005. Breeden worked as a teaching assistant for two years and said he suspects his students nominated him. He said he doesn't know what specifically about his teaching style helped him win the award.

"I guess I'm very friendly, very positive and really supportive of students and encourage them to take chances and really push themselves past their zones of comfort in photography and challenge themselves and push themselves into new realms," he said.

Breeden was one of six photojournalists that took pictures of Hurricane Katrina last semester. He went to New Orleans five days after the hurricane hit and nearly asphyxiated on gas fumes in his car on his way there. He stayed at Baton Rouge, slept for two hours, shot pictures and called it a day at 4 a.m. for three days.

"I learned more doing that in three days than the whole time I've been here in school about how to approach people and how to empathize with people, because ultimately what I want to do is conflict photography, and I guess that's the closest approximation you could have of being in a war," he said. "By far the best learning experience I've had since I've been there. Not just how to relate to people but on how to operate with no sleep and no gas in your car and how to survive."

After finishing his education, Breeden said he hopes to live in a country where living expenses are cheap such as China, Cambodia or Jakarta. Another option would be going to countries with conflict such as Afghanistan, the Congo and Uganda.

Breeden is not sure when he will be done with his degree, but he said he hopes sometime in the next year.

"I don't know how long I have to finish the master's report. It might be seven years," he said. "I'll try not to wait that long."