អស្តង្គត . SUNSET

In 2018, I visited my parents’ home in my hometown, Battambang. One morning, while I was sitting on a red swing chair, my parents came close to chat to me. In the middle of the conversation, suddenly my dad said: “Soon, we  are going to die,”  speaking of himself and my mother. His words struck me deeply, and I realised that I wouldn’t have much longer with them.

Since he was a young boy, my dad had liked planting vegetables and fruit trees. He planted fruit trees wherever he lived. After retiring from government work in nearby Siem Reap Province in 2008, my parents returned to their hometown of Battambang. Since his return, he planted a wide variety of fruit trees on their land – fruit for our family to eat and also to sell at the local markets. My parents liked working together: planting, harvesting and selling. But with age, they couldn’t work as hard and they began to slow down.

My dad’s words have lingered in my mind. Enjoying our morning conversations, we walked together around our plantation and observed the trees, the growing fruit and the fallen fruit scattered amidst the dead leaves on the ground. Observing nature in this way inspired me to produce the “Sunset” series. ​ In April 2019, using natural light under the trees, I poetically took these photographs of fallen fruits and dried leaves at my family plantation in Battambang.

In the end, we all go back to nature, back to the earth and the new life will spring from that ground. That is the philosophy of live and death.

Battambang, 2019

Note: My dad passed away in Battambang in December 2020, at the age of 74 .

Memo by Miriam La Rosa for Fertile Ground at Center for Contemporary Photography 2021

The works are inspired by a conversation the artist had with his parents about the ineluctability of death. Organic materials are photographed decomposing into the ground, epitomising the cyclic nature of life and death. The images take me to Greece and the myth of Demetra, the goddess of agriculture who lost her daughter to the god of the underworld. In her despair and later joy (following their reconciliation), Demetra gave birth to the four seasons. The seed remains after death and is also the door to a new life. It operates in a recurring journey that goes from morbidity to hope, and from tree to soil. “In a handful of healthy soil there are more organisms than the number of people who have ever lived on planet Earth”—the words of Dr Kristine Nichols, who is a leader in the movement to regenerate soils, resonate here. By overexploiting the land, we have affected the circularity of Demetra’ s seasons. The poetry of Hak’ s work reminds us of the importance—and inescapability—of their return.