Phnom Penh: Photographs 2010-2012

Phnom Penh is a captivating city, full of contrasts, where visitors feel right at home. Its contradictions are only evident to Westerners. Everything flows: two Rolls Royce, a bunch of tuk-tuks, several bicycles and a motorbike fruit vendor can be found on any one corner. A dynamic capital city, Phnom Penh is unequal, heterogeneous and noisy. The landscape is suddenly and chaotically broken by the first glassed towers. Barefoot monks, precious stone vendors and former guerrilla fighters dressed in silk walk the streets, side by side with the last elephants found in Southeast Asia. Neon lights, music and smells help in keeping away from the tropical heat during nights. It is said that this city was considered the jewel of Indochina during the 1960s and 70s. This was the place to live , somehow like the mythical Beirut recounted by my grandparents. However, this life radically changed during the 70 s: first, a dictatorship supported by the American army, and then, the city was entirely evacuated on April 17, 1975, under the order of the Khmer Rouge, expecting a bombing attack that never happened. Four years later, people slowly went back to the city after a Vietnamese invasion. Although there is no other social experience of this magnitude in modern history, and in spite of the millions who died, its present inhabitants, many of which lived the exodus, do not seem to carry this horrible epic burden on their shoulders. A woman whose picture I took at the Russian market told me: The past is gone, it does no longer exist; the future belongs to my grandchildren; hence, I live in the present . Phnom Penh does not suffer from amnesia, but like this woman, it simply lives in the present. It gets up early, very early, but its rhythm is paused. There is time for bread, taking a nap, raising a flag or sending postcards. It rains in Phnom Penh, but nobody runs desperately in search of an umbrella. All is natural and confortable. Chaos keeps a balance. Although a city, Phnom Penh is also a village. It may well be this scale and these human paths that captivate visitors. Built on the river bank, Phnom Penh is full of markets, temples, palaces, motorbikes and Lexus jeeps. Former torture centres, today turned into open museums, coexist in resolute harmony with the landscape. Phnom Penh is a city of royalty and colonial settlers. Its distinctive architectural stamp and aura were given by the kings who preceded Sihanouk and the French Administrators. These photos are intended to depict, by means of current records, such a vibrant, intelligent, complex, colourful and friendly city. They need to be included, because Phnom Penh is an urban centre best appreciated through the eyes. This is not a travel book or a publication emphasizing aesthetics: these images are not eminently political. They describe, or try to explain, the paradoxes of this city, simultaneously village, with its anarchic functional present. They are actual photographs with no unique perspective or predefined focus. A method based on diversity was used to select them among thousands. Taken with a variety of devices, from simple mobile phone cameras to professional reflex equipment, these pictures are displayed like the city itself: openly and without any intervention. We hope that they are motivation enough to justify the trip. The world associates Siem Reap and the Angkor temples with Cambodia, but there is nothing more authentically Khmer than Phnom Penh: a city with a decadent, energetic and beautiful face, a city where the East, that does not exist, meets the West. This Eastern continent that is raising its voice cannot be understood without a journey through the colonial avenues of Phnom Penh and its promissory present.

170 PAGE PAPERBACK BOOK

Please check the photos, as they are of the book listed and form part of the item description

GOOD CONDITION