PHOTO PHNOM PENH 2018 - Relations Media

PHOTO PHNOM PENH 2018
Ninth edition
From October 5th to November 5th
October 5, 6 and 7, opening and events.
Every weekend of the month, projections, debates, events.

Faithful to the orientations that were taken from the first edition, in 2008, Photo Phnom Penh
continues to develop exchanges between Asian and European photographers and promotes,
allows and highlights the emergence of a new Cambodian photography.
Thanks to the partnership with the French Institute of Cambodia, the support of the French
Institute ( Paris) and the generous contribution of Mr. Zhong Weixing, the festival continues
to reach a young audience, mostly students and begins to develop actions in schools, premises
of possible future developments. The support of the Ministry of Culture and of the Ministry of
Education, as well as the benevolent attention of the Municipality of Phnom Penh, allow the
festival to show in many places, indoors and outdoors.
After a positive experience last year, two colleges in the center of the capital will host
exhibitions, also opened and accessible to the general public.
If the festival develops lectures of portfolios, conferences, workshops, meetings, visits of
exhibitions with the artists, the exhibitions and the screening evenings of the opening days
constitute the heart of the event.
For the evenings, we will have again with great pleasure the musicians of Phare Ponleu
Selapak and their leader Vanthan juggling with all the instruments, traditional and electric, to
accompany an unprecedented projection of dialogue with the exhibitions. And, at the end of
this inaugural sequence, a contemporary, exclusively female, rock band will give a singular
tone to the images of young Cambodian photographers.

EXHIBITIONS :
In a symbolic way, the gallery of the French Institute of Cambodia establishes a dialogue
between French Olivier Culmann and his deep and funny series "The Others", questioning
identy through humourous self portraits, with the unpublished works of the Cambodian Lim
Sokchanlina, photos and videos of the whole "Wrapped Future" in which he sets up space and
landscape to speak about the notions of boundaries, barriers, and thus migration and
displacement

© Olivier Culmann – The Others

© Lim Sokchanlina

On the wall of the French Embassy, Charles Fréger presents two excerpts from two series
that echo the old popular traditions in Europe and Asia: Wilder Mann who explores the rituals
very often related to solstices in Europe and Yokainoshima documenting Japanese traditional
practices and costumes in the archipelago.

    © Charles Fréger - yokainoshima, 2013 - 2015

Korean Daesung Lee will present his two series in two big colleges. "Futuristic Archeology",
staged large-scale photographs in the landscape of Mongolia to draw attention to the
disappearance of traditional culture in a country shaken by the changes in economic data. "On
the shore of a vanishing island", a manifesto highlighting the dangers, including floods, of climate
change and the situation of migrants and displaced persons linked to these changes. Those
works will naturally have a particular resonance in a country with similar problems.

© Daesung Lee - futuristic archaeology 2014 South Korea

Watsamon Tri-yasakda is a young Thai girl who works with LGBT organizations in her
country. In a humorous series, she portrays a group of young gays dressed in traditional
school uniforms and highlights how institutions, education, costume, are ways to set up both a
model and an image of manhood. Without convincing result from his series ...

© Watsamon Tri-yasakda

Mak Remissa. The best known - and most important - of Cambodian photographers
returns with a new series to be presented at La Plantation. Faithful to its way of working, this
reference photojournalist develops every two years a personal series and refines each time a
little more his mastery of staging. "From hunting to shooting", a new colorful metaphor, is a
beautiful poem that stages birds in a sumptuous shadow theater.

   © Mak Remissa

Ly Min. This Cambodian who practices amateur photography with an untouched passion
for years shows for the first time his work. In very pure pictures he focused on documenting
the floods in Phnom Penh from his balcony. On a black background, it's a series of slices of
life, schoolchildren returning from classes to housewives carrying their purchases on
improvised rafts that scrolls before our eyes. Ly Min will not normally be able to continue this
series: the municipality has carried out work that should normally prevent his area from being
flooded.

   © Ly Min

The dialogue between Asia and Europe unfolds, outside, on the island of Koh Pich (Diamond Island) where, in
the evening, is found all the youth of the capital:

Yang Ming (China): Square format, in black and white, apparently very classic but much
more complex than it appears at first glance, he travels through China and tracks the
aberrations of a country he believes that he has lost and is totally losing his cultural roots.
Strange, disturbing, mysterious images.

© Yang Ming

Alexey Shlyk (Belarus). This young man, born in 1986 in Minsk, Belarus, recalls in his
memories what life was like in the Soviet Union, through the mixture of patience, ingenuity,
recycling and resourcefulness born of the need to overcome conditions of constant shortage.
At the same time, it pays tribute to this creativity, no longer vital, but has become over time a
distinctive feature of the Belorussians. Between portrait and still life, with a lot of humor, a
reflection on history, time, everyday life.

© Alexey Shlyk

Floriane de Lassée (France). These are modern caryatids around the world, women who
carry impossible charges and weight on their heads. "How Much Can You Carry" is above all a
tribute to those bearers of life, those whose lives are heavy and where smile and laughter
become the key to a livable existence. Colorful, full of life, these images look positively at
situations and countries in difficult situations.

© Floriane De Lassée

JH Engström (Sweden). An excerpt from his latest book, "Crash", published in Japan by Akio
Nagasawa Publishing and in which he plays, as he had initiated in Revoir, with color
negatives. Baggage scanned at the airport, trees and landscapes, body details, everything
becomes strange, poetic and at the same time almost disturbing. A profound questioning
about how we perceive the world and how photography transcribes it.

© JH Engström

Yoshinori Mizutani (Japan). His series (still in progress) on Tokyo parrots is an
enchantment of colors, movement, permanent surprise. Whether in a group on electric wires,
seized and isolated by a flash, flying in the sky at sunset, they embody a real poetic of the city.

© Yoshinori Mizutani

                                                 Press : Catherine Philippot – Relations Media
                                                                             & Prune Philippot
                                                           cathphilippot@relations-media.com
                                                          prunephilippot@relations-media.com
                                                                            + 33 1 40 47 63 42