The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand expresses its deepest condolences to the family and many friends of Richard Diran, a longtime club member who staged a memorable art exhibition at the club in 2005. He died last week at Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok after a battle with cancer.
Christopher G. Moore writes:
Richard Diran was a legendary American adventurer and gemologist whose colorful life included work as a painter, trader in gemstones, restaurateur and art dealer. He authored “The Vanishing Tribes of Burma,” published in 1997. The book serves as a photographic record of Richard’s 17 years of exploration among the hill tribes of Burma.
The Hong Kong newsweekly Asiaweek described it as "the most comprehensive visual record of Myanmar’s many ethnic groups.”
Richard was born and raised in California and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts. He earned a black belt in karate in 1974. Over the years, I heard many stories about his life in Japan. Along with his Japanese wife, Junko, he owned the Fuki-ya Japanese Restaurant, the first Robatayaki restaurant in the United States.
In 2014, an exhibition sponsored by a human rights group in Sweden displayed 70 of Richard’s photographs. It was opened by Aung San Suu Kyi and received international press coverage. He donated all the photos from the exhibition to the National Museum of Myanmar.
Suu Kyi, who received a copy of Diran’s book while she was under house arrest in Rangoon 15 years earlier, later wrote a letter to thank him for his work, The Irrawaddy reported.
“I was struck by the beauty of our people, and the beauty of diversity,” she said at the opening in Rangoon’s Inya Lake Hotel. “This is what we have to recognize: that diversity is beauty, it is beautiful.”
Richard was a close friend for more than 30 years. He was a fixture at The Texas Lonestar Bar and in the Washington Square subculture. He was widely respected and loved by the regulars, and a favorite of old George Pipas, the bar’s American owner.
My friendship with Richard and our adventures in Bangkok and Rangoon were a personal inspiration for my own work. We traveled to Burma together in the 1990s and early 2000s. Our adventures over the years were fictionalized in my novel Waiting for the Lady. Richard’s larger-than-life personality is reflected in Ed McPhail, Vincent Calvino’s longtime friend in the Calvino series.
He will be long remembered for his legacy as a wonderful and generous friend, a storyteller, photographer, painter and bold adventurer. Richard was part of a Bangkok expat community whose membership has become vanishingly small. Knowing Richard, he has gone ahead of us, mapping out his next adventure.
Richard’s cremation took place quietly in Bangkok on July 22. |
