The PHOTOPHNOMPENH - Photo festival is on again and run from Sunday, November 28 until Saturday, December 4
Every new edition, just like the stages of life, is an occasion to look back at the paths already taken and to dream of those to come. Photo Phnom Penh is no exception to this rule and we have tried both, to strengthen what we have achieved and to pursue our experimentation.
The watchwords remain those of exchange and sharing, between the photographers and the public, between the photographers from Asia and from Europe, and, of course, between contemporaries who will engage the dialogue in the course of the "Intersection" project that we are offering once more.
With no particular theme, but with the firm intention of bringing to light the various perspectives of photography today, the programming is nonetheless influenced by a kind of confrontation between the documentary style: from works in extremely difficult zones of conflict, to the exploration of daily life and lived experiences -- and fiction: from the staging of a story, to the strange and the marvelous. There will be material for reflection on how "realism" manifests itself in photography today, a time in which technology has radically changed the production of images, as well as their diffusion and the way in which they are read.
The greatest satisfaction is undeniably felt in being able to present a large sampling of work by young Cambodian photographers, of very high quality, diverse and demanding. This is proof--if ever a proof had been necessary--that there exist in this country artists who are asking to express themselves, and have been able to do so, thanks to the opening of work spaces and encounters such as the Studio Images at the Centre Culturel Français and the photography workshop at the Royal University of Fine Arts.
All this is very important, for sure. But what is really essential for the festival, with its discoveries and encounters, is to renew the magic of the “Images boats” on the Tonlé Sap, the joyous disorder of the "Photo Shops" in the Olympic market, the projections accompanied by inspired music in the courtyard of the Royal University of Fine Arts, and the building of a bridge between PPP and the circus festival Tini Tinou, which will be presented right after PPP in Battambang by the NGO Phare Ponleu Selpak, that the CCF cooperates with on a regular basis.
A new edition, new authors, new places as well, and the affirmation that we are continuing to build on a well-established basis. As simple as that.
Christian Caujolle
Exhibitors
Mathieu Pernot
Born in 1970 in France. Lives and Works in Paris and Barcelona. After studying History of Art at the Faculty of Grenoble, Mathieu Pernot entered the National School of Photography in Arles and graduat¬ed in 1996.His works have been exhibited in many places like the Mediterranean Centre for Photography in Bastia (2007), National City's Immigration History in Paris (2008), International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts in Liege (2010). He has published several books including «Hautes surveillances", Actes Sud (2004) "Le grand ensemble" Le Point du Jour (2007), «Un camp pour les bohémiens", Actes Sud (2001) for which he won the International Prize Romanès in 2002.
Well established in documentary, he presents a reflection, a memory of the city at a time when the past was being destroyed, 40 years ago, and re-thought as "modern."
Raphaël Dallaporta
Born in 1980. Lives and works in Paris. After receiving his diploma at the Ecole des Gobelins in Paris, he obtained a scholarship in 2002 for one year at the Fabrica (Italy). His series "Xmas trees" was published by Telerama, and was presented by the Fnac in January 2003.Correspondent until 2003 for the Colors magazine, he publishes his work in Vogue-Italia Ojodepez, Blast, CitizenK International, Official, Wad, Extra Small. In 2004, he was selected by Martin Parr to exhibit at the Rencontres d'Arles. His work can be seen in the collections of the Fond National d’Art Contemporain and La Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
Two versions of "still lifes," in which the photographer, in his studio, illuminates anti-personnel mines as if they were pieces of jewelry. In the streets, he sees the sadness of thrown-away Christmas trees that have served their holiday purpose.
Li Wei
Born in 1970. Lives and works in Beijin, China. Since 2000, Li Wei participated in numerous collective exhibitions in the world and has also done solo exhibitions in prominent locations since 2004 as the Galeria Tribeca Spain (2009), CPH Mogadishni gallery in Denmark (2009), Yeh Rong Jia Culture & Art Foundation in Taiwan (2008), PYO Gallery, Seoul (2006), Marella Gallery, Beijing (2005), Marella Gallery, Italy (2004). His work has been published in numerous magazines such as Vogue, Republica, National Geographic, Asian Art News.
Here is a Chinese who defies the laws of gravity, makes characters fly, between fright and joy, in order to talk about the state of the world, of nature in danger, of the overweening importance of the city.
Mathieu Bernard-Reymond
Artist in residence
Born in 1976 in France. Lives and works in Switzerland. Having received his diploma at the School of Applied Arts in Vevey, Photography Section, he is now teaching in that school. Mathieu Bernard-Reymond has exhibited in many places such as 14-1 Gallery in Stuttgart, Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, Eu-Japan FestSendai city in Japan, and the Gallery donzévansaanen in Lausanne. He has participated in publications including "Future Images, Mario Cresci, ed. Motta (2009), William A. Ewing: Faire faces Le nouveau portrait photographique, Actes Sud (2006), "Metamorphosis do real," Encontros da imagem (2004), "You are here" (Monograph), HSBC Foundation Prize, Actes Sud (2003). And he has also won several awards: Arcimboldo Prize, Paris Photo Prize Award, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie Prize, HSBC Foundation Award for Photography. We find the work of Mathieu Bernard Reymond in the National Fund for Contemporary Art in France, the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne and in private collections.
He takes delight in leading us into error, in building images that are worlds at once real and impossible, and, as a consummate
Nica Junker
Born in 1975 in Germany. Lives and works in Japan. After studying Philosophy and Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Leipzig, she joined the high school of cinema Konrad Wolf in Potsdam Babelsberg in Germany where she graduated with honours for her short film Little Miss Perfect. She deepened her knowledge of photography in Japan and received a diploma in 2008 at the Central University of Art and Design in St. Martin, London. She was honoured in 2008 by the Pyramid Award for Photography at Deutsche Bank. She‘s currently exhi¬biting at the Museum of Himalayan Art in Shanghai, China with a work on photo booths ‘Silent Neighbours’.
A German living in Tokyo who, with poetry, play, and staging, absorbs the feeling of colors with an extreme finesse. Daily life is mixed with wonder.
Tith Narith
Born in 1985 in Cambodia. Lives and Works in Cambodia. In 2006 Ravuth graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts of Phnom Penh in visual art. He attends the workshops of Angkor Photo Festival and exhibits his work at Meta House and Java Café and Art Gallery in PP in 2008.
He participates in the Intersection project at the PhotoPhnomPenh Festival in 2009. He teaches Visual Art at the Global Art Center.
A very original offering attempting an approach to urbanism: this young Cambodian has photographed maps, wherever he found them-- abandoned, dog-eared, dirtied, almost destroyed--which have given rise to feverish bets and games. Is this a cartography of dashed hopes?
Matthias Bruggmann
Born in 1978 in France. Lives and works in Lausanne – Switzerland After receiving his dipoma at Vevey Photography school’ in 2003, he obtains the Federal Fine Arts Scholarship in 2004. He is one of the “50 photographers of tomorrow” of the Elysee Museum in 2005. His work has been exhi¬bited in the Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts in Lausanne, Hide and Seek Camouflage in 2000, in the Noorderlicht festival in Groningenin 2004, in Photoforum in Bienne in Somalia in 2007, in the Polaris Gallery in Paris in 2010.
A man from Switzerland criss-crosses the planet looking for areas of extreme turbulence, but without being a "photo¬journalist." He knows how to separate the ''spectacular" from dangerous situations by his choice of distance, which makes us doubt the reality of the facts.
Heng Ravuth
Born in 1985 in Cambodia. Lives and Works in Cambodia. In 2006 Ravuth graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts of Phnom Penh in visual art. He attends the workshops of Angkor Photo Festival and exhibits his work at Meta House and Java Café and Art Gallery in PP in 2008. He participates in the Intersection project at the PhotoPhnomPenh Festival in 2009. He teaches Visual Art at the Global Art Center.
Pursuing his research on the self-portrait and the body, he presents a series of male nudes in black and white, at once modest and forthright, astonishing, the result of a reality putting in place his own creative style.
Loan Nguyen
Born in 1977 in Lausanne. Lives and works in Switzerland. Loan Nguyen studied in the School of Applied Arts of Vevey and obtained her diploma in 2000. Having participated in several collective exhibitions, she presents her photos in an individual exhibition in the gallery Esther Woerdehoff in Paris, which represents her. Since 2003, her work was shown in the gallery Herrmann and Wagner in Berlin, in the gallery Duncan Miller in Los Angeles and in the Fotomuseum Winterthur. She recently exhibited her new series "Weather report and natural phenomena" in the Kunsthalle of Erfurt in Germany. In 2007, Loan published her second book, "De retour", which tells the story of her father returning to Vietnam after 38 years in Switzerland.
Born in Switzerland, she discovered late in life her family's origins in Vietnam, and had the talent to bring her culture back to life, with emotion and modesty, in a series staged with skillful color-- a fine reflection on the image and the space of our perceptions.
Kim Hak
Born in 1981 in Cambodia. Lives and works in Cambodia. Hak obtained a diploma in Tourism at the National Institute of Management. He develops a passion for photography and parti¬cipates in various workshops at the University of Kuala Lumpur and during Angkor Photography workshop. In February 2010 he joined the Studio Images co-organized by the agency Melon Rouge and the CCF. He is moreover a photographer of the agency since November 2009.
A brilliant example of the younger generation of Cambodian photographers, whose attentive approach to color, along with a rare sense of space and presentation (which we hardly notice) shows us the relationship between the Cambodian architectural heritage and the youth of Phnom Penh.
Kent Klich
Born in 1952. Lives and works in Sweden. Kent Klich studied psychology at the University of Gothenburg. After obtaining his degree he worked with troubled adolescents before turning to photography. He joined Magnum in 1998 and left in 2002. His work has been displayed in numerous national and international exhibitions, including Gallery Mira, Stockholm (1988), Wermlands Museum in Sweden (1999), Visa pour l’ìmage in France (1999), The Danish Architecture Center (2008), Gallery Tegen in Stockholm (2009), Umbrage Gallery in New York (2010). He won several prizes as the Museum of Work’s documentary photography prize in Sweden (2002), Fogtdals Forlag Prize (2005) and GuldDok for the Best Short Film (2006) in Copenhagen, Picture Imperfect winner of The Swedish Photo Book Prize (2009).
Kent Klich also produced movies and participated in numerous joint publications as well as in his own name.
A Swedish "reporter" who was able from early on to build a distance to the direct relation of facts and to create a point of view. Almost conceptual in his recent work on the destruction of the interiors of Palestinian houses in the Gaza strip and, in black and white, his testimony on Rumanian orphans after the fall of the Ceaucescu regime.
Dileep Prakash
Born in 1965. Lives and works in Delhi. His works have been featured in national and international exhibitions such as the India International Centre, in India (2001), at the Goethe Institute in Frankfurt (2006), at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris (2007), and Photoink Gallery, India (2008). He has participated in collective exhibitions including "The Self and the Other--Portraiture in Comtemporary India" in Palau de la Virreina and the Artium, Spain (2009), and "Where Three Dreams Cross--150 years of photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, " at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and at the Fotomuseum in Switzerland (2010).
He has edited publications including "The Anglo-Indians," Photoink Editions (2008), and "Whistling Steam," Roli Books, Lustre Press (2003). Since 2007, he has been wor¬king on a new project on boarding schools built during the English colonial empire in India. A book titled "What Was Home" will be published by Photoink in autumn, 2010.
In his portrait series "The Anglo-Indians," color is imposed with a great subtlety of tones and a palette both rich and varied from image to image, going from monochrome to confrontations of color. Documentary without formalism.
Krysztof Zielinski
Born in 1974 in Poland. Lives and Works between Wabrzezno and Berlin. In 2001, Krzysztof graduated from the Department of Still Photography at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague. He has participated in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad, including the 26th Sao Paulo Biennial, solo exhibitions in the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw and in the Centre of Contemporary Art (CoCA) in Torun. Works by Krzysztof Zielinski are part of contemporary art collections in Europe and the USA. In 2009 his book Millennium School was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing and CoCA in Torun.
Like a childhood memory, a path into the past, made of light and coloured vibrations, of corridors and gentleness, of angles and fluidity, to discover a Polish school. Pure emotion and a rare attention to details, to "little nothings."
Sovan Philong
Born in 1986 in cambodia. Lives and works in Phnom Penh Reporter and photographer for the daily newspaper Phnom Penh Post. Philong Sovan discovered photography while training with Mak Remissa, and further developed his skills working in Studio Image at the CCF. In 2009 his work was presented at the Rencontres d'Arles during the "Night of the Year" festival, as well as at the PhotoPhnomPenh festival.
Following his work on the families living in the old Catholic chapel in Phnom Penh, he has a new project, pushing his reflections on the portrait still further by lighting his models with his computer screen. Troubling and sensitive.
Svetlana Khachaturova
Born in 1969 in Russia. Lives and works in Paris. After a diploma of French language and civilization at the Sorbonne and 3 years at the school of photography of Paris Icart (from 2001 till 2003), she obtains a residence in Niort (Young European photographers) in 2003. The same year, she is a finalist of Voies Off in Arles with the series "Inside Landscapes"; she obtained the Bourse du talent n°35 in 2008. She also works as a graphic designer.
Rigorous and enigmatic, surprising and poetic, she leads us into a marvelous, incomprehensible world. And she asks us with a courteous elegance simply to be attentive. Both of her works, "Interior Landscapes" and "Marvelous Experiences," are serious and puzzling at the same time.
Sreng Meng Srun
Born in 1987 in Cambodia. Lives and Works in Cambodia. In 2006 Meng Srun attended a course in Photo journalism. In 2007, he works as a freelance photographer for the Agence France-Presse and for the Cambodian Scene magazine. Since February 2010, he participates in the Studio Image workshops that are co¬organized by the Agency Melon Rouge and the CCF.
While tourists are generally considered necessary consumers, even though they have become actors in the capital, they are never asked to speak. This is precisely what this new artist on the local scene is doing, with curiosity and humor.
John Vink
Born in 1948 in Belgium. Lives and works in Phnom Penh. John Vink studied photography at the School of Fine arts of La Cambre in 1968 and is a freelance journalist since 1971. He joined Agence Vu in Paris in 1986 and won the Eugene Smith Award for his work on Water in Sahel that same year. Between 1987 and 1993 he completes a major work on refugees in the world. A book called ‘Réfugiés’ has been published in 1994. He becomes a full member of Magnum Photos in 1997. In 1993 he starts working on ‘Peuples d’en haut’, published in 2004, a series of chronicles about communities with a strong cultural identity living in mountainous areas. He is based in Cambodia since 2000, a country he has been visiting since 1989. 'Avoir 20 Ans à Phnom Penh' is published in 2000. Besides documenting the social/political situation and the Khmer Rouge tribunal, he works on a major essay on land issues in Cambodia.
To mark his twenty years of life in Cambodia, a selection showing his characteristic approach to composition, at once firm and fluid, among the thousands of images he has devoted to his adopted country. Pure black and white, and part of a beautiful tradition, he chooses subjects that are cultural, political, and social.
Gapchul Lee
Born in 1959. Lives and works in South Korea. In 1984, he obtained a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in photography at the University of Shingu to Sungam in Korea, His photo¬graphic work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Korea, including Soil of Other Person (1988), Seoul Art Museum; Collision and Reaction (2002), Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul; and exhibitions at the Hanmi Photography Museum in Seoul. His works have been exhibited overseas on numerous occasions, including in Ten Contemporary Korean Photographers (2008), FotoFest 2000 Biennial, Houston, and Korean Modern Photography, Montpellier, France. He is rewarded with the Dông¬gang Photo Prize in Korea and Sagamihara Asia Photographer in Japan in 2003, by the Lee Myoungdong Prize in 2005 and the Jebikot Photographer Prize in 2008 in Korea.
Solidly anchored in South Korean tradition, this sage has been developing a marvelous work for years: his goal is "photographing spirits." Thus, in images that are both documentary and poetic, he leads us into the world of shamans, processions, rituals. A troubling alliance of realism and vision.
Chhin Taingchhea
Born in 1984 in Cambodia. Lives and works in Phnom Penh Chhea studies Painting at the Royal University of Fine Arts and works at the same time on photography. He had several exhibitions of his oil paintings as well as of his photos and participated at the first edition of PhotoPhnomPenh in 2008.
His black and white photos give buildings of the Royal University of Phnom Penh an intriguing timeless character.
Siv Cheng Works within the framework of Studio Image
Born in 1979 in Cambodia. Lives and works in Phnom Penh. She works as a trainer of trainers in media and social work as well as a translator for organisations and joined the Studio Image workshop this year.
The example of a passion coming to life and the discovery of the possibilities of expression by the means of photography. Cheng proposes us to play our life on a chess board.
You Chamroeun
Born in 1989 in Cambodia. Lives and works in Phnom Penh You Chamroeun is in his third year of Interior Design Studies at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. His passion for photography eventually led him to the photo course Studio Images.
By setting his lens in different angles on a building under construction at the embankment of the Tonlé Bassac River, he offers us a reflection on the urban development of his country.
Neak Sophal Works within the framework of Studio Image
Born in 1989 in Cambodia. Lives and works in Phnom Penh. Neak Sophal is a student of Communication Designs at the Royal University of Fine Arts. She participates at the Studio Image since January 2010.
She explores daily life of the population living on barges in the surroundings of Phnom Penh.
Mak Remissa
After his series on "Fishes and Ants," in a skillful presentation, he is back with work that is subtly personal, poetic, a study of water and the life it contains, with an astonishing control of pictorial tonalities. One of the undeniable professionals of journalistic photography in Cambodia is pushing his research forward. Bursts of poetry.