Cambodia

Cambodia grew out of spontaneous photographs, taken without purpose, the simple and honest documentation of a place that has no equal anywhere else, from Siem Reap to Kampot by way of Phnom Penh. It is another world that opens to whoever sees it, a world that is, ironically, richer in colour, in smiles, in simplicity.

Far from what we know, Cambodia offers a sumptuous and cruel interlude, between the breadth of its culture and the depth of its fracture, its history, what happened there and is so rarely spoken of. I staged nothing. I photographed what passed in front of me, a child, a procession, a door, inscriptions on stone, incense rising, the saffron robe of a monk crossing a bas-relief, without knowing what I would do with it, and it was later, in front of the screen, that these fragments found each other, as if they had been waiting.

This series is deeply rooted in a reality from which I tried to draw out beauty and contemplation. But it is also meant to let the mind travel between the lines, and to imagine what might be hiding behind yet another layer when you choose to look at it differently. Perhaps a temple behind a face, perhaps a face behind a temple, perhaps only the feeling of having been, for the space of one image, somewhere you are no longer quite sure exists.