Soosday! Vandy Rattana is a young Cambodian photographer/law student who has exhibited at Noorderlicht Photofest 2006. He belongs to Visual Art Open, an art collective, which aims to expose contemporary Cambodian artists to the world.
© Vandy Rattana
© Vandy Rattana
© Vandy Rattana
In Self-Portrait, Vandy does not appear in any of the photographs himself. Instead, he provides a ‘true-to-life image of his immediate environment’.
The result is an authentic visual archive that provides a counterbalance to the clichéd image of Cambodia as the land of monks, temples and beggars. Moreover, much of the national archives were lost in the war. Visual material about previous generations is hardly available. That makes the recording of history something of the greatest importance, Vandy Rattana suggests.
Add Vandy as a friend on flickr. Read the feature on Noorderlicht here. Some of his stuff at Popil Photo Gallery.
Find out more about VAO here.
I hope to discover more Cambodian photographers. There is a void there but it’s explainable as most of the people are struggling to make ends meet. When I was there, there were many galleries having pictures of monks and Angkor Wat for sale. The inclusion of Vandy’s works in Noorderlicht will hopefully spur on a new generation of local photographers in Cambodia.
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I want to take some pictures from the communist days. Is that possible and is there a trademark for that?
What kind of photos are you looking at? And what do you mean by communist? I don’t think there’s a trademark or copyright for a political idea. I think it’s fine as long as your work is original, where you don’t steal images from others and call it your own.