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Water Bubble, Bokor Mountain, from Impressionistic Photography. Image courtesy of Chan Vitharin

Photography in the Post-Khmer Rouge Era

By Zhuang Wubin

THERE IS PROBABLY no other episode in modern Southeast Asian history that has been so tragically photographed than the reign of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) from 1975 to 1979. From the portraits of Tuol Sleng, otherwise known as the S-21 prison of the Khmer Rouge R (KR), we get a sense of the shock and R R), bewilderment that the Cambodians must have felt under the regime. is article is a survey of three senior Cambodian photographers. A Although the development of photography is not specically addressed in Cultures of Independence: An Introduction to Cambodian Arts and Culture in the 1950s and 1960s, it is not hard to detect an innovative spirit amongst the Cambodian artists of that era. Filmmaker Ly Bun Yim L (b. 1942) recalls adapting a toilet bowl of shiny porcelain into an enlarger for the photographs that he took of the Kompong Cham landscapes, which were in great demand from foreign and local tourists. Over at the School of Cambodian Arts, which would A become the Royal University of Fine R A Arts (RUFA) in 1965, the arrival F FA of Japanese painter Suzuki by 1948 heralded the emergence of modern Cambodian painters like Nhek Dim and Sam Kem Chang, many of whom were his students. Interestingly, the Japanese teacher seemed to have a very hostile attitude against the medium of photography. Artist Pen Tra (b. A P 1931), a student of Suzuki, explains: He [Suzuki] said it [photography] wasnt true. It was not natural. He said that the photograph was like a mirror which absorbed everything. It pulled everything in so that you saw everything clearly For him, even a really good photograph, people would look at it for a minute and then it was over. ey would not look at it again. And yet, the Tuol Sleng portraits seem perpetually etched in our conscience. ey are probably the most widely seen and mentally poignant photographs ever made by any Cambodian photographer. In this sense, all the photographers proled in this essay live in the shadows of these portraits. With these confounding thoughts in mind, we start our account of the rst-generation of Cambodian photographers to have emerged at the end of the Vietnamese occupation in 1990. Special attention is given to

the personal practices of these three photographers. e most senior of them is Heng Sinith (b. 1964; Prek P Takauv Village, Kandal Province, P Cambodia). His personal experience of the regime makes a fascinating read and shows that it is not necessarily accurate to lump all the KR comrades R into one murderous whole. Because Hengs father had carpentry skills, most of his family members were not relocated from their village in Kandal. roughout the regime, his village was administered by dierent groups of KR comrades and at least two of R the groups were found to be kind and respectful. Unfortunately, his father

Chhim Theang, Male, 18-years-old (1977) Joined the [Khmer Rouge] Revolution: 16 April 1974. Position: Group Leader. Theang and Nim images courtesy of Heng Sinith and DC-Cam

would pass away from exhaustion in 1979. Heng, which means lucky in both Teochew dialect and Khmer language, was actually his fathers name. After he passed away, Heng Sinith adopted it as his family name in memory of his father. After graduating from the village school in 1981, Heng studied theatre and scripting at RUFA from 1984 FA FA to 1988. It was really a waste of time because they had no books. e students had to scout for books. When they found one, they would copy the entire book, so that their classmates could share it. In Hengs case, one of the reasons for joining the university was to escape conscription from the Vietnamese army. When Vietnam liberated Cambodia in 1979, Hengs family said to him: e ship is still the same, although the man at the steering wheel has changed. It is true that they now had more food to eat but the situation was still dire, Heng explains. To move from one commune to another, the Cambodians still required permits from the Vietnamese. ey did not kill the Cambodians per se, but they sent them to heavily mined areas to clear the jungles. A lot of Cambodians inevitably perished. After graduation, he worked as a coolie for several years before saving enough to get married in 1990. In 1993, he bought a Praktica camera P with a 50mm lens from a friend for US$150. Heng asked his friend to teach him how to load the negatives and take pictures. at was how he started his photographic career, taking pictures of local tourists in front of
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Chhim Theang, 43 years old (2002).Theang is seen making a sh basket with his wife (background) in his house at Kampong Chhnang, some 100km west of Phnom Penh, in July 2002

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the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. At R P A the end of that year, without knowing how to conduct an interview, Heng was employed as a journalist and photographer for a local newspaper. e editor said to him, Well, at least your description of events is good! In 1997, Heng became a professional photojournalist. Over the years, his work has been published in Time, Newsweek and New York Times, amongst others. He is now an Associated Press (AP) photographer P in Cambodia. A few years back, Heng Sinith created a simple and powerful project that added to our understanding of the KR regime. Entitled e Victims R of History: Voices of the Khmer Rouge Victims and Perpetrators (2002), it was funded privately by several ambassadors in Cambodia and supported by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), an NGO dedicated to the research and documentation of crimes committed by the KR. During the reign of Pol Pot, whenever we saw P P the young KR cadres in the elds, R they always looked so clean and tidy. However, we were not allowed to look at their faces directly. ey were more powerful than kings, recalls Heng. For this photographic project, Heng would reprint the portraits of these mid- and low-level KR comrades, R which were then kept at Tuol Sleng and are now part of DC-Cams archive. Using the info collected by DC-Cam researchers, Heng would track the cadres down and document their daily lives. He explains: I do not want to show the history of their murders, but their lives as spouses and villagers. Many of these cadres are now very poor, living at the edge of far-ung villages. eir lives are in sharp contrast against the ex-KR cadres who are now in the ruling government. eir neighbours may not do anything against them but they live very much in fear. Naturally, they were reluctant to have their pictures taken, although they were friendly with Heng. On his part, Heng would spend time with the cadres working in the elds and having lunch together. He would tell them the rationale of his project: I am a young man who does not understand much about the KR. Y You work directly under the boss. at is why I have come to talk to you. Slowly but surely, Heng gained their trust and the project took shape. E Exhibited at the Tuol Sleng in 2002, the project oers a redeeming light into a brutal episode in Cambodian history. It is ludicrous to suggest that Hengs work normalises the cruelty of the KR. Instead, it warns us against the tendency of oversimplifying the KR history. Hengs R concern nds support in the work of researchers Meng-Try Ea and Sorya Sim. In an essay entitled Victims and Perpetrators? e Testimony of Young Y Comrades at S-21, they argue: e guards, interrogators and other sta at the infamous KR S-21 prison, are almost always depicted as heinous perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide. But it is rarely recalled that many, perhaps most, of these KR cadres were in fact children. ey were deprived of their innocence and thrust into a world that none of them could have imagined, and few would have chosen. According to the researchers, many of the young comrades of S-21 became slaves to a revolution they could not escape, enduring horrible conditions and bearing physical and psychological scars from which they will never recover. In this way, they fell victim to the KR revolution. R e contextual depth of Hengs work becomes even more evident when compared to Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness (1996-1998), an attempt JUNE 2010 made When the Water Rises, the Fish Eats the Ant; When the Water Recedes, the Ant Eats the Fish (2005), which is based on an ancient Khmer proverb that remains popular today. On a literal level, the proverb relates to the fact that while ants and sh take turns to dominate each other according to the physical environments that they nd themselves in, neither species will be able to emerge as the winner in the long run. e equilibrium of nature will be preserved. In terms of politics though, this zero-sum endgame is clearly more violent. A believer that art should mirror society, Mak wanted a way to express his anxieties about Cambodia in the post-DK era. e proverb provided the metaphor. Photography provided the language. In Cambodia, if you say something directly, people will become defensive, adds the photographer. ey will ask, Who are you to say so? Are you A God? On the other hand, if I use photography, people will accept my message with a smile. e project is a marked departure from his routine of press photography, which is typically straightforward. Shot in Kandal Province where P he spent his childhood years, Mak hopes to fascinate his viewers with the possibility of seeing up-close something so small. Strong colours and unusual compositions accentuate the viewing experience. But his message remains no less signicant: Today, we struggle to main our status at work and at home. We strive to rise in power at every opportunity, but it is always done at the expense of others. Status and power are the ultimate goals. However, unlike animals, we have a choice and hopefully we can make a dierence. E Even though its concerns are current, the work is very much rooted in Maks memory of the KR regime. R A Articulating the Khmer proverb in photography appears to be a more sincere attempt to localise the medium than China artists replicating traditional ink paintings in Photoshop. Unfortunately, since his brief foray into conceptual photography, Mak has been bogged down by his EPA work. He remains ambivalent about the attempt, saying that the work brought him a lot of publicity but provided nothing for his family. Within the context of postKR Cambodia, Mak is probably ahead R of his times. A Alongside Mak, Chan Vitharin (b. 1975; Phnom Penh, Cambodia) P is another photographer who has emerged from the rst group of students who did photography at RUFA. Much younger than Mak and F FA Heng, it is almost impossible to detect the scars of the KR regime in his R personal photographic work.While the KR and the subsequent Vietnamese R occupation had led to the destruction of the transportation infrastructure in Cambodia, the issue was kept very much in the background of Chans Transportation (2002). Instead, it is more likely that this documentary project is motivated by a longing to travel and to see dierent cultures. e various means of transport captured in the series provide a unifying theme to an otherwise disparate travelogue. In Impressionistic Photography (2004), Chan tries to nd a converging point for his artistic practice as a painter and a photographer. Instead of relying on Photoshop manipulation, Chan falls back on the methodology already employed by some pictorial photographers an intense fascination with faade and surfaces. When I rst studied photography, I wanted to use it to help my painting, recalls Chan, in a complete reversal of the position held by Suzuki in the 50s. Now, I treat it as an artistic medium. P People usually think that photography can only present the reality while you can do anything you want in painting. But who says photography cannot alter the reality? A lot of my ideas in photography are related to the history of painting. Chans father, brother and cousin worked as painters for political and advertising posters in the 1980s, which was why by the mid-80s, the family already had quite a few art books at home. ey also had Russian R communist magazines in French,which actually used a lot of photography. As a painter, Chan Vitharin is drawn to the Russian artists. He also likes R some paintings from Van Gogh and Picasso, especially those that adopt the Russian visual language. Around R Russian A 1992, his father bought a Praktica P camera, which they used to take family portraits at the landmarks of Phnom P Penh. His teacher gave him a Nikon FM2 in 1993 for his coursework and told him to give the camera to someone else upon graduation. Graduating from RUFA a year FA FA after Mak, Chan worked as a photojournalist, doing a lot of singles and short essays for publications in Cambodia. In 2003, he did a oneyear course at the National Superior School of Photography in Arles, A South France. Strangely though, the hegemonic inuence of that school left almost no visual or stylistic imprint in Chans subsequent work. On the other hand, there are some Asian artists who have graduated from the same school and have since adopted the Arles Arles style of photography. In Chans case, his resistance is probably due to his initial background as a painter and his general knowledge of art history. Nowadays, he uses photography for his artistic practice, although he does take on occasional commissions with cultural organisations like Reyum, a R local NGO dedicated to Cambodian arts and culture. For the last 10 years, Chan has also taught photography and painting at RUFA. Photography is a F FA minor for students who do painting or sculpture under the Faculty of Plastic A A Arts. Although there is an increasing interest in photography, RUFA has FA FA actually cut back on the photographic minor. A few years back, students doing the photographic minor could still spend two hours a week on the subject. In 2009, the minor has been removed from the curriculum. is is a far cry from 1993 when Chan and Mak Remissa would spend three days R a week studying photography. e cutback today is down to a lack of funding. In fact, the number of classes in RUFA has also been reduced, adds FA FA Chan Vitharin. Without RUFA as a platform, there FA FA is little that Chan can achieve as an educator. He can work with the foreign organisations in Cambodia that promote photography. However, a few of them take a I know better than you attitude, which cannot be benecial to the development of Cambodian photography on the long run. In any case, any photographic programme in Cambodia has to involve, in some way or another, the experiences of these three photographers. e problem is that Heng Sinith and Mak Remissa R are kept extremely busy by their work as wire photographers. Given the fact that these agencies are unlikely to employ more photographers in Cambodia since it is not as newsworthy as Iraq, whatever Heng or Mak does has to come from sacricing their time with family members. Nevertheless, what these three photographers have done within their modest means has already paved the way for the younger generation of Cambodian photographers, including Vandy Rattana and Khvay Samnang.

Soam Nim, Female, 28-years-old (1975). Joined the [Khmer Rouge] Revolution: 15 May 1974 . Position: Group Leader. Home Village: Prek Thmei Sub-district, District 18, Region 25, Kandal Province Soam Nim, 55 years old (2002). In 1974, they [the Khmer Rouge] began recruiting for the military. I volunteered to join them, because I thought it was better than being a normal citizen who was subjected to intense labour like constructing dikes and dams. I would also have better food. My father did not want me to do so, but I was determined, for I did not want to be looked down. My father had been a very strong man, but on the day I departed, he cried. The Khmer Rouge destroyed my family.

by widely acclaimed Viet Kieu (or Overseas Vietnamese) artist Dinh Q. L to address the KR history. R Using his signature photo-weaving technique, L combined images of the Angkor bas-relief and the Tuol Sleng portraits into a tapestry of Cambodian history. On a conceptual level, the work actually reinforces the perception of homogeneity within the KR. More troubling is the suggestion that there is some form of quasihistorical linkage between the Angkor era and the KR reign, even though R inscriptions and documents on Cambodian aairs between Chinese envoy Zhou Daguans visit at the end of 13th century and Gaspar da Cruzs missionary excursions in 1556 remain thin. Seen in this light, Heng Siniths project provides a modest yet honest perspective on the KR history. R Unlike Heng, Mak Remissa (b. 1968; R Phnom Penh, Cambodia) has had P the opportunity in 1993 to study photography at RUFA in a FrenchFA FA funded degree programme initiated by A Arts Cambodge Association. During the DK years, Maks family moved back to his fathers village at Kampot, Southwest Cambodia, thinking that it would be safer. As a teacher, his father was subsequently killed by Maks cousin, who was then the village chief. I had no choice. If I didnt kill him, they [the KR] would have killed R R] me, his cousin replied when Mak confronted him. After completing his secondary school in Kampot, Mak moved back to Phnom Penh because there was not P any high school teacher in the province. By targeting intellectuals, the KR regime had left the countrys education system in tatters. Back in the capital, RUFA was starting its enrolment FA FA again. Without even nishing his high school, Mak embarked on his BA in painting at RUFA in 1985. Despite FA FA knowing nothing about the medium, he joined the three-year photography programme in 1993 just to learn an extra skill. e class started with 21 students. Only ve took the nal exam. Some dropped out because they had joined the programme for fun. Others gave up after struggling with the course.

A At that time, the Arts Cambodge A Association had bought around 500 books for RUFA. ierry Diwo, his F FA French photography teacher, would guide Mak and his friends through the books. Graduating in 1995, he was subsequently sent by Diwo to work as a photojournalist for local French newspapers Cambodge Soir and Le Mekong. Maks photographic career was thrust upon him. While I was trained as a photographer,I had no idea what it was to be a photojournalist, recalls Mak, whose mother is Cambodian Chinese. I merely followed the editors instructions and took whatever they wanted. By then, the photography programme had run out of money, but RUFA still had the FA FA equipment. Maks teacher had also left him some money to buy negatives. In 1995, he persisted in transferring his knowledge to another six RUFA F FA students, meeting them at the end of the day in school. One of them has since become a photojournalist. In 1997, Mak started working as a stringer for Reuters, even though his R English then was very poor. In any case, he wanted to improve himself. His friends at Reuters helped him R ll up the application form for a onemonth fellowship in Bangkok to study photojournalism. He remembers: Even though I could not fully E Even understand what the teachers said, I tried to get a sense of the proceedings. In 2000, he had another opportunity to participate in a Paris workshop organised by VU photo agency. VU R Right up till 2006, Mak continued working as a freelance photographer for NGOs, ad agencies and editorial clients. He subsequently joined the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA) P A as a fulltime photographer. By then, he had enough of the uncertainties of working as a freelancer. At that At time, Cambodian papers were paying anything from US$15 to US$25 for one-time usage of an image, explains Mak. And when the NGOs had assignments, they would pay me US$100 a day, instead of the dayrate of US$300 that they would pay a foreigner. As a Cambodian, I was cheaper. Before joining the agency, Mak