Pascarel, Nicolas

Nicolas Pascarel, Naples, Italy

"Shorts cut memory" Cambodia

It is about a work on the memory and consequences of that in the current Cambodian society. The photographic work is cut in three stories summarized briefly in the past, the present and the future.

Both first ones (past and present) are directly connected because in the first story, I photographed the prison from Tuol Sleng to Phnom Penh which served as center of torture and as extermination during the period red Khmer from 1975 till 1979. The second which was realized by means of the association Krousar Thmey ( new family) is a series of portraits of the children of streets night in the city. They are in a sense " the children of Pol Pot ", the direct consequences and the logical and infernal results of years of terror, of war and poverty, misery.

In past and present, I used the same photographic technique by creating voluntarily a frontal lighting on a tiny part of faces. The idea was to play on the ambiguity and the common responsibility of some and the others in the Cambodian society of these last 25 years or alive and deaths, executioners and victims mix strangely and sometimes occupy the same place in front of the History.

The third and last story (the future) is a series of photos realized at the edge of the Mekong every evening in the same place and at the same hour. The river represents for me, this moment of sweetness, magic and hope in a life, which nevertheless, continues to forge ahead.

I looked by this process to go back up (to raise) the time of the memory, that of the souvenirs which mix in a reality closer to us to sweep down in the sunset into the edges of the Mekong, there where souls are reborn and invade court of the alive. Nicolas Pascarel 2006-06