Time goes by … It was ten years ago that Alain Arnaudet, then in charge of the French Cultural Center of Phnom Penh, proposed to me to create the photography festival. A challenge because there was no obvious audience, very few photographers and a weak cultural environment with regard to visual propositions.
This ninth edition proves more than ever, in a Cambodia that evolves faster than ever to the point of having made almost unrecognizable its capital now bristling with towers that break its traditional horizontality and risk of being burned by the marked presence of more more Chinese, the bet had a meaning. The only proof of this would be the mobilization of the 180 volunteers who registered to prepare the event and to animate it during the various activities.
While there is still no education to image worthy of the name, while the school – both public and the myriad of private companies – completely ignores the issue of images, the public is at the “rendez-vous”. Curious, eager to see and learn.
The concept, which makes dialogue between European and Asian creators, has not changed. It is proving and just and productive. And, if this year French artists are in the spotlight with Charles Fréger presenting in large format on the huge wall of the Embassy of France his work on the ancestral traditions in Japan, with Floriane de Lassée whose women on their head of improbable charges serve as a visual identity at the festival, with Olivier Culmann exhibiting “The Others” at the French Institute of Cambodia and leading a workshop at Lycée Français Descartes, Asia is there in strength, with talents confirmed from China or a young sprout from Thailand. And, while in 2008 we had a hard time finding three Cambodian photographers to exhibit, we had to reluctantly limit to four this year the exhibitions of local designers. There is indeed, in the wake of the festival, a contemporary “school” of Cambodian photography.
All the more reason to prepare the tenth edition. It will begin with exhibitions in France that will present four generations of authors, writers from the Khmer Rouge period whose only photographic remains are the portraits – otherwise admirable – of the victims of the detention and torture center. S21 caught by their executioners. An exhibition that will be presented at the end of February at La Filature in Mulhouse, then taken again at the Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille, before, without doubt, other destinations. There are, of course, other projects, books and eBooks among others, in search of funding.
We would like the tenth edition, even more plentiful, to further dialogue between exhibitions in the public space and indoors, to present for the first time in Cambodia a panorama of the contemporary creation of still images and to confront it with photographs. taken during the last ten years by those who came to participate in the festival or accompany it.
And, in order to prolong the event, we have the dream of opening a school, free of charge, to train the image and its trades those who feel the need and want to express themselves. For the tenth edition, as for this bet on the future, we obviously need financial means. Yes, it’s a call. It deserves to be heard, given what has been achieved, with minimal means, for ten years. In advance, thank you.
Christian Caujolle
http://www.photophnompenh.org/
https://www.facebook.com/PhotoPhnomPenhAssociation/
