The seventh edition of the Phnom Penh Photo Festival (PPP) is introducing two major changes this year while staying true to its original commitment of encouraging the cultural exchange between European and Asian artists and supporting the emergence of a local photography scene.
First, in terms of structure: to ensure the economic sustainability of the festival and to also invole it more in the local environment, a Cambodian NGO called Photo Phnom Penh Association has been created it is chaired by Sylvia Sisowath and led by young Cambodian photographers. The Photo Phnom Penh Association is in charge of organizing the festival in partnership with the French Institute of Cambodia, which is significantly involved in all aspects of the event. The association’s role, in addition to the practical organization of the event, will be to look for new partners – both local and foreign – it will also help in the development of pedagogical actions. Despite a technically complex startup and with the support of the Friends of the Phnom Penh Photo Festival, a French structure governed by a 1901 law, the first results allow us to view the future with greater equanimity for the festival.
The date has also changed. The festival will begin during the last weekend in January taking inti consideration the schedule of local cultural events and the dates of major international photo events.
A special effort is focused on the development of the exhibitions in public areas. In addition to the wall of the French Embassy, spectacular and symbolic of the festival from it’s beginning, the Sisowath Quai, which is a popular walking area, is hosting three sets of exhibitions and we will find proposals at the Central Market. And much more, outside, in the future.
This novelty will obviously not preclude the loyalty of the private galleries, the Royal University of Fine Arts, (RUFA) the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), as well as at the French Institute of Cambodia, all of which have hosted exhibitions of the festival since 2008. A special effort is made towards students and schoolchildren with lectures, screenings and other interventions.
In terms of content, Phnom Penh Photo Festival is a venue that welcome international artists and act as a place of discovery for new artists. The Cambodian scene is widely valued with the first exhibitions in connection with the teaching at Studio Images, a workshop organized every Saturday by Mak Remissa and Philong Sovan for young people who are interested in expressing themselves by using still images. We find, in various modalities, questions of identity and memory, social, and aesthetics through the creation today. The expansion on the regional scene is all natural with two Thai artists, a photographer from Singapore, experienced artists from Taiwan and China, as well as a young artist from Nepal for the first time.
Europe will be represented at the festival with a diversity of aesthetic proposals from a French contingent and works combining a reflection and playful approach from Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and with the Franco-Moroccan photographer Hicham Benohoud.
The year 2015 in Cambodia is a symbolic date: 40 years have passed since Pol Pot’s troops entered the capital in 1975. At the French Institute of Cambodia, Mak Remissa, who was 7 years old at that time, brings back the memory by using paper cutouts to show the forceful evacuation of the Phnom Penh’s residents in three days. Kim Hak, born after the city was liberated, evokes what could be a period of terror through still lifes with objects that were buried and banned and that reappear today. The texts tell us about the history of each object. In front, French artist Charlie Jouvet proposes a portrait of Phnom Penh today as if the disaster had happened again: an empty capital, in overexposed colors, images that are struggling to recompose themselves. It is Phnom Penh today and also a manner of exorcism.
The festival is also a manner to remember, under multiple forms, the capacities of photography, in times when images are everywhere in a kind of chaos, to help us better understand and confront reality , dream, analysis , smile and to share the pictures of today.
FESTIVAL
Photo Phnom Penh 2015
From January 31th to February 28th, 2015
Institut français du Cambodge
218 rue 184 – Phnom Penh
Cambodia
+855 (0)23 213 124 / 125
[email protected]
www.institutfrancais-cambodge.com
