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Today, 26th July 2010, Kaing Guek Eav, commonly known as Comrade Duch, who is charged with war crimes and for his part in the deaths of up to 12,000 Cambodians will face a final verdict.
In 2003, Masaru Goto photographed ten survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Goto: “The Khmer Rouge regime is remembered for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people (from an estimated 1972 population of 7.1 million) under its regime, through execution, starvation and forced labor. Directly responsible for the death of about 750,000, the policies of the Khmer Rouge led, mainly through starvation and displacement, to the death of more than 1 million more people. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population of the country it ruled, it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century.”
Invisible Scars is a portrait series of “the older generation in Cambodia that represents survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in the 70s. Most of this group were forced to leave their village to undertake slave labour in the ricefields … The ones that survived returned to their homelands after the Khmer Rouge period in 1979. Some talk about what happened 35 years ago, others close their eyes or even turn away and continue what they were doing, taking care of their grandchildren.”
I am well aware of several photographers having dealt with the torture camps and prisons of Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia (not least those of Nhem Ein, official prison photographer for the Tuol Sleng prison). I will return to these practitioners and history in time, but for now I’ll just alert you to this one project by Eric de Vries.
Thanks to Bob for the tip off.
Prison Photography 