History
Cambodia, like other nations such as Nicaragua, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Rwanda and others, is a nation which has undergone genocide. It stands as an extreme example, having lost over 2 million of its people, (one in every four Cambodians,) between 1974 and 1979, during the reign of the so-called “Killing Fields” perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.
The reign of the Khmer Rouge began at the end of the Vietnam War, after the US invasion of the country. Cambodia’s King Sihanouk had allied himself with the North Vietnamese, against a puppet government installed by the United States. When Sihanouk allowed North Vietnamese troops to use Cambodian territory to invade South Vietnam, the United States military began a relentless campaign of carpet-bombing over Cambodia, decimating thousands of Cambodians.
A few surviving factions of Cambodians hostile to the US puppet government were radicalized to the extreme. They formed the core of what was to become the Khmer Rouge. After the end of the Vietnam War, as the United States withdrew from Southeast Asia, the Khmer Rouge began their campaign to bring Cambodia back to an agrarian culture of subsistence farming. Cambodians were told that it was the “Year Zero”–a new beginning with no past and no future. It was the beginning of the Killing Fields.
Until this day, Cambodians have not come to terms with the massive genocide which followed. Although it has stabilized somewhat as a nation and is currently in dialogue with the United Nations to begin genocide tribunals in the future, Cambodia’s past remains unresolved, with perpetrators and surviving victims living side by side.
The Project
The project utilizes an image database of photographs. These photographs were taken as a matter of public record at Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia’s capitol, Phnom Penh. In this prison, which was a converted elementary school, many thousands of Cambodians were killed. The photographs were taken upon the prisoners’ arrival and then again immediately before their execution. They are a poignant and stoic testament to the regimented genocide carried out over the course of several years.
In the words of one journalist:
The halls of Tuol Sleng are lined with thousands of haunting photographs of the prisoners who were tortured and executed here. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records of their victims. Before prisoners were killed, they were photographed. These photographs are the most indelible images of the atrocities. Old men, young women, even children as young as 2 or 3 stare back from the black and white portraits. Each photograph was proof that Tuol Sleng had received the prisoner and was intended to convince leaders that all the enemies of the regime were being found and “smashed,” as the Khmer Rouge put it.
— Amanda Pike, journalist
An image of a stone slab, reminiscent of both a gravestone as well as an execution wall, is projected onto a wall via a laptop and RGB projector. When the viewer looks through a pair of glasses suspended above a podium, hundreds of portraits scroll by randomly, flashing rapidly. A loud, mechanical sound is heard. When the viewer steps back, one single portrait remains. The single portrait then slowly fades into the stone, leaving a kind of residual stain or imprint.
The faint image represents the memory of that individual, not quite remembered, but also not forgotten–a ghost impression left behind as testament of one life; a life begun individually but belonging to the family of countless thousands who were destined to suffer the same terrible fate.
This project is a monument to the genocide which, like many others in the world, happened quietly without intervention. As such, it seeks not to resolve Cambodia’s history, nor to glorify any one heroic figure, but to serve as a reminder to the many souls who perished, some simply because they drove a taxi or wore glasses.