Photography in Cambodia: 1886 to the Present

When we talk of photography, as of many other things, we can see there is Cambodia and Angkor, plus Cambodia beyond Angkor. Considering ​“ruins and duration in Latin America photography,” Colombian professor of histor Carlos Jimenez Moreno coined the attractive phrase of ​“lasting instant,” which perfectly refers to archaeological ruins from various periods of ancient times, as in Angkor, and could be a perfect definition of photography, too.

A creative designer of museums and art exhibitions for many years and from Australia to the Netherlands to Qatar to Malaysia, the author had not really a museologic mindset when he started to work on the present book, and it didn’t intend to limit the scope of his research to big themes such as ​“colonialism and photography in Cambodia”, or ​“Angkor through the photographic lenses,” even if both of these are indirectly covered here. As he defines himself in his short presentation he is, ​“a narrator of social history who has used photography as a medium of story-telling” for over thirty-five years.

Now, all photographs, even the most amateurish, tell a personal story, yet a keen, trained eye is required to select those prone to tell us all a memorable, often poignant story. This universal message encapsuled in the B&W or color ​“lasting instant” is what we call ​“beauty”, what retains our oversaturated eye and deeply moves us. Before starting with the chronological chapters that will bring us to the 2020s, the author expertly shares four of those, including one with a caption that simply reads: ​“Friends on a Boat. 1961, Michael Vickery.”

Now, this photograph of a river outing involving a young and enthousiastic English teacher and his Cambodian friends, boys and girls, has typically this impact on us. Michael Vickery, who was to become a respected (yet non-conformist) Khmerologist, had this knack of capturing fleeting and powerful emotions in one snapshot. Like the people in the photo, we silently wish this moment of bliss could last forever, but we see the date, 1961, and we think of the dark clouds set to gather soon over Cambodia.

An expert in photography and art installations, the author knows how to ​“stage” photographic renditions of past moments — the ​“Tjeater of Photography,” and how to let them speak by themselves since they reflect a not so distant past fractured by civil war and national catastrophe. Tellingly, he quotes in the opening pages Srin Sokmean, a Phnom Penh student who since 2014 has spent all his spare time looking after rare photographs and documents rescued from oblivion and decay, the founder of Amazing Cambodia, a social media platform often pillaged by unscrupulous social media users.

After a substantial recap of Cambodia in photographs taken in Cambodia during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries — with Scotsman John Thomson being definitely ​“the first photographer in Angkor”, but then why ​“1886″ in the title as Thomson’s first photo album, The Antiquities of Cambodia, was published in Edinburgh in 1867? — , the author develops his own narration of Cambodia’s social history from the 1860s to the 2020s based on national and institutional archives, as well as private collections (such as the often referred-to Philippe Damas collection in Singapore).

Family albums and photographic archive from private photo studios - some of them active through two or three decades after the war — usefully complete the research stock. On that note, one has to note that since the country’s modern linear history has been so terribly disrupted by war and destruction, many attempts of calls for sharing or selling private photo albums remained moot, since they simply don’t exist anymore. At the 2025 edition of Rencontres photographiques d’Arles, Marion and Philippe Jacquier shared their quite unprecedented endeavor: since 2005, they’d been buying lots of photographs in flea markets around France, accumulating some 10,000 shots from wedding parties to underground erotica, all bought in one bulk by an enthusiast collector and given to the Grenoble Museum…

Republican soldiers entering Vihear Atharoas វិហារអដ្ឋរស្ស [also called Wat Artharoet], the devastated ​“Eight-Corner Temple,” on top of the Royal Mountain at Oudong, overlooking stupas and mausoleums of Queens and Kings of Cambodia, c. 1975. The Associated Press Cambodian stringer credited for this shot and only known as Pen, who was probably killed shortly after taking this picture, has been later honored by the Tim Page/​Indochina Media Memorial Foundation (IMMF). [here in lower resolution than in N. Coffill’s print book.]

What follows is an illustrated time capsule summing up the salient moments of Cambodian history through the last 150 years or so, a smart sequence of events and related images, sometimes surprising, sometimes hilarious, always to-the-point and allowing the author to pay tribute to important yet often uncredited photographic contributors.

That’s how we go through the ​“postcard postcard boom” of the first three decades of the 20^th century, when Cambodia was seen as the summum of the exotic, especially in Frence, oddities such as baby beauty contests set up by the French colonial administration — or King Sisowath’s august portrait used on trade cards by Chocolats Guérin-Boutron, the surrealist trip of artist-aviatrix Titayna to Angkor, American traveler Hal Lippincott reading a copy of Harry Hervey’s King Cobra in front of Angkor Wat, working photos taken by ethnologist May Mayko Ebihara, or by the wandering archaeologist who stumbled upon Kbal Spean, EFEO Jean Boulbet, King then Prince Sihanouk as patron of arts and crafts, Odile Wertheimer’s Sinoun La petite cambodgienne (1971), the rare photos of the political trial of Prince Norodom Naradip orchestrated by the Lon Nol régime, Prince Sihanouk and Princess Monineath’s journey to Angkor starting from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, poignant war photos, three pages soberly and somberly entitled ​“April, 17, 1975,” a rare clear photo of the gigantic Phnom Krom canal to the Tonle Sap Lake built by the Khmer Rouge through slave labor, the 1982 issue of National Geographic putting back Cambodia on Western photographic radar after a decade of silence, Associated Press John Widener’s photos of women troops , AFP Stefan Ellis’ photo of Khieu Sampan mugged in Phnom Penh in 1991, AP David Longstreath’s photo of Pol Pot dead on his bunk bed, the national funerals of King Norodom Sihanouk, the assassination of opponent Kim Ley (10 June 2016) covered by John Vink, some last images of Pailin gem hunters by Colin Grafton…

Still Life: chilling or blissful instants — out of thousands of photographs consulted, the selection captures the deceptive banality of history in the making, the fleetiness of joy: 1) A Royal Palace maid testifying at the ​“treason trial” of Prince Norodom Naradip in 1971 (sitting beneath the judges) [author’s collection]; 2) a group of unidentified Angkar cadres on a train in 1977 [DC-Cam collection]; 3) a young woman climbing a thnot tree captured by Mimi Palgen-Maisonneuve [archive Mimi Palgen].

Still Life: chilling or blissful instants — out of thousands of photographs consulted, the selection captures the deceptive banality of history in the making, the fleetiness of joy: 1) A Royal Palace maid testifying at the ​“treason trial” of Prince Norodom Naradip in 1971 (sitting beneath the judges) [author’s collection]; 2) a group of unidentified Angkar cadres on a train in 1977 [DC-Cam collection]; 3) a young woman climbing a thnot tree captured by Mimi Palgen-Maisonneuve [archive Mimi Palgen].

Still Life: chilling or blissful instants — out of thousands of photographs consulted, the selection captures the deceptive banality of history in the making, the fleetiness of joy: 1) A Royal Palace maid testifying at the ​“treason trial” of Prince Norodom Naradip in 1971 (sitting beneath the judges) [author’s collection]; 2) a group of unidentified Angkar cadres on a train in 1977 [DC-Cam collection]; 3) a young woman climbing a thnot tree captured by Mimi Palgen-Maisonneuve [archive Mimi Palgen].

There is also the opportunity to raise the question of Cambodian photographers. First, a paradox: ​“There appear to be no instance where Cambodian photographers can be credibly named as the owner of an image until 1972,“even if the 1960s had seen the boom of robust print media and popular publishing houses. No explanation was offered, as the author’s research on individual biographies was then only initiated. We might suggest that, in the same manner as published texts were almost never signed in Cambodia for the longest time, the idea of individual ​“authorship” on a photograph was perhaps foreign to Cambodian tradition.

An additional remark: while the first photo studio owned and run by a Vietnamese individual opened as early as 1869 (Đặng Huy Trứ on Hanoi’s Thanh Hà Street), we do not know of any project of launching a local photo studio to document the production of the Ecole des arts cambodgiens, nor of Cambodian youngsters expressing an ambition in taking up photography studies. And the Cambodians who did work as photographers for the EFEO archaeologists after the independence have so far remained anonymous. 

Associated Press Jeff Widener (b. 1956) captured in 1988 these ​“Girls With Guns,” female soldiers under the government of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), one year before the Vietnamese troops in charge of the toppling of the Khmer Rouge régime ceased to occupy Cambodia. — from Nicholas Coffill, Photography in Cambodia (2022) [all photos are here in lower resolution than in the actual printed book].

The period 1979 – 1989 was less documented by the Western media — with the exception of the National Geographic 1982 special issue — but there were several talented Russian photographers then working in Cambodia, the work of which Angkor Database will soon share. 

The transition to the contemporary period salutes the effort of associations dedicated to the preservation of memorial heritage, in particular the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM) and the Bophana Center with a formidable archival work encouraged by founder and film director Rithy Pan. Private conservation is also presented in the book, for instance with the ​“buried photo archive” of the Rama family,

Then, as the print (and even online) news coverage rapidly dwindled starting from around 2015, photography lost its relevance as a medium of information to open a novel, creative chapter in Cambodia with what we’d call experimental photography, where the photographic technique is used to express highly subjective feelings, idiosyncratic outlooks. Here, the author mentions in particular the work of Cambodian or Cambodia-based artists Khvay Samnang (b. 1982), Lim Sokchanlina (b. 1987), Sovann Philong (b. 1986), Leang Seckon (b. 1974), Pha Lina (b. 1986) [and his rendition of the Koh Pich Bridge Stampede tragedy on 27 Nov. 2010], Kim Hak (b. 1981), Heng Ravuth (b. 1985), Mak Remisa (b. 1970), Japanese star photographer Izu Kenro (b. 1949), Pech Sophea (b. 1998), Neak Sophal (b. 1993), Snow Whitening by New Cambodian Artists, Anders Jiras (b. 1946) and a spirit-healing ceremony…Stimulatingly, the Light Emitting Radar (LIDAR) is listed here for its technological apportation to our understanding of the ancient Khmer temples and their surrounding terrain. Sometimes, two distinct creative approaches dealing with a shared theme are associated in the same section, such as ​“Remarry” by Hannah Reyes Morales Al Jazeera/​US) and the ​“Bound” series by Vong Sopheak (b. 1993), about the aftermath of forced marriages under the Khmer Rouge.

In total, over 340 photographs are gathered here with great care as a labor of love, all of them pertinent and eloquent, either from seasoned professional photographers (Mimi Palgen, Micheline Dullin, Raymond Cauchetier, Loke Wan Tho, to name only a few) or from anonymous yet highly perceptive witnesses to history.

____________________________________

• [b/​ʌ/​t] In the book, the author published a remarkably crisp photo of three Japanese ​“archaeologists” leisurely sitting on Bayon Temple third level in 1942 – 1943, part of 12-strong mission set up by the Shinshu Otani-ha branch of Jodo Shinshu (Shin Buddhism), Higashi Honganji temple, Kyoto. Shortly after Photography in Cambodia came out, more material was found about this expedition photographed by Naotaro Nomura, a photographer and member of the team. [see Tomoyoshi Kubo, ​“151 wartime photos of Angkor ruins found at university in Kyoto,” Asahi Shimbun, 27 Jan. 2022]. Now, what was the ultimate motive for a ​“conservation” mission at a time Cambodia was occupied by the 82^nd Regiment of Japanese infantry? More research needed.
• [b/​ʌ/​t] Republican soldiers entering Vihear Atharoas វិហារអដ្ឋរស្ស [also called Wat Artharoet], the devastated ​“Eight-Corner Temple,” on top of the Royal Mountain at Oudong. What exactly happened in Oudong in the years of the Khmer Republic (May 1970 — April 1975)?

[b/​ʌ/​t] is the new (2025) visual code introduced on Angkor Database in order to identify ​“yes, buts,” — anything in Angkor-related research that remains open-to-debate, calling for further discussion questions. Several academic websites have come to list those entries in sections called Hypotheses. b/​ʌ/​t topics are filled on the page b/​ʌ/​t — ADB hypotheses, currently in development.