“If someone sees the Rohingya’s old photos, those photos will tell him or her the history of the Rohingya. How they looked. How their culture looked. When these things are seen, their understanding of the Rohingya will be awakened.”

Rohingya elder, 2023

For people in Myanmar (Burma), the Rohingya community’s history has been, at best, questioned, and at worst —and in reality—rejected outright. Much of the Rohingya’s visual history has been lost, confiscated or destroyed during waves of violence, forced displacement and genocide over the past 60 years. Describing the efforts Burmese regimes and others have made to destroy and erase the Rohingya community from Burma, a Rohingya elder explains,

“The world didn't see how they have systematically destroyed our legal documents and other evidence. The world just saw the physical attacks on us. So, they are trying to deceive the world by saying, ‘The Rohingya are not from here’. What they did to us with the pen harmed us more than their physical attacks did. It’s like destroying the roots of a tree. That's the actual genocide.”

The Rohingya expression Ek Khaale means Once Upon A Time.

Ek Khaale reveals and shares the long and deep connection the Rohingya have to a place they have called home for centuries, Arakan, and to a nation they helped create and contribute to before they were slowly and systematically excluded from it, Burma.