រស់រាន . ALIVE

“Alive” is a long-term photography project about memories tied to objects. Both memories and objects endured through Cambodian history and the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Why objects?”

On April 17, 1975, the day the Lon Nol government fell in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and ordered the city’s two million residents into the countryside. People were able to take only a few of their belongings, such as clothes, cooking utensils, a few pieces of jewellery and above all, photographs to remember their loved ones. Most of the objects featured in my photographs were used by families before the war, during the Khmer Rouge regime, at the border camps, and then travelled on a long journey with the victims and survivors to new lands, continuing to be used as everyday items. Each photograph has a clue that leads to a true story behind each object. The objects have been reclaimed, dug out of the ground after the Pol Pot period, or they have been kept throughout the families’ lives.

This project is a race against the clock because living witnesses are gradually disappearing. This many decades after the regime, the elders who experienced that time period have begun to pass away. If these living witnesses of the war pass away with their experiences undocumented, those memories will be lost. Without learning from the past, we risk repeating the same mistakes. As such, preserving these memories are important not just for Cambodians but for all of humanity. Photography is one way to capture these memories of human history, to ensure they are not forgotten.

All these photographs and objects are deeply significant. They are evidence of a past time in history. War can kill victims, but it cannot erase the memories of the survivors. The memories must be kept alive, known and shared in the consciousness of human beings, and preserved as heritage for future generations.

Chapter I: Battambang – Cambodia (2014)

In 2014, I started this long-term project “Alive” from my own family’s memories. From there, I decided to expand this project to other families living in Cambodia.

To hide their backgrounds, my parents, like many others, threw away many old photographs and identity cards. They would have been killed immediately if even one Khmer Rouge soldier found out who they were, especially if they were well-educated people (intellectuals), former government employees or former army officers. Leaving their homes meant leaving many things behind. Even keeping photographs to remember their previous lives was a huge risk.

While working on “Alive”, I discovered something I hadn’t known before. My parents hadn’t simply hidden their photographs in their clothes. The reality was more poignant! The carefully covered all of their photographs in plastic and buried them underground at the place they stayed at during the regime. Time and time again, they went discretely to check if these precious fragments of their past life were still there.

INSIDE & OUTSIDE

War breaks things into pieces, not just the landscapes of this one country, but also humanity itself. I am trying to collect all of the broken pieces of memory carried by the Cambodian diaspora and piece them back together. It is both a healing process for old and young alike, and a way to foster meaningful conversations between generations.

Chapter II: Brisbane – Australia (2015) / Supported by Arts Queensland

In 2015, I had my first opportunity to extend this project beyond Cambodia. I engaged with four Cambodian diaspora families living in Brisbane. I remained fascinated by the objects and photos migrants brought with them to Australia, especially those from the border camps in the 1970s and 1980s.

Chapter III: Auckland – New Zealand (2018) / Supported by Rei Foundation Limited

I engaged with 12 Cambodian families now living in Aotearoa, documenting personal objects that are a meaningful part of their journey surviving the Khmer Rouge, refugee camps and resettlement far from their homeland. By sharing these experiences through photographs and text, we aimed to generate new dialogues between individuals, whānau and communities to remember, (re)acknowledge and (re)analyse personal and national histories and identities.

Chapter IV: Tokyo, Kanagawa & Saitama – Japan (2020 & 2022) /                                                                                                                  Supported by Rei Foundation Limited & The Japan Foundation Asia Center

The Khmer Rouge regime caused psychological trauma across generations. Both victims who experienced the regime directly, and the former scholarship students who left Cambodia to study abroad before the regime and got stuck overseas are affected by psychological crisis. Some faced and experienced the conflict directly, some heard about it from others, and some researched it after the end of the regime. But all of them lost family members s. The students stuck overseas lived without hearing any news from their families for several years. I engaged with 15 Cambodian families now living in Japan. The effects may show themselves in different ways, but they all are victims, victims of history. Children born post-conflict are affected too. Healing will take decades.

Cambodia & Cambodia diaspora: 2014 – Present

REMARK:

“ALIVE” is a long-term, on-going project. I will continue working with Cambodian diasporas and communities in Europe, the United States and Canada. The project’s main goal is to collect individual memories to compile them together in one cohesive record of history.