Phnom Penh 1991
The American Friends Service Committee called in 1990 to see if I would teach a prosthetics-training course in Cambodia. Having become an amputee in 1980, photography somehow led me to the graduate prosthetics program at UCLA’s School of Rehabilitation Medicine, and to teaching and practicing in underserved countries. I discovered that while some doors had shut, others opened.
The country of Cambodia was then “closed” to all but about 200 invited foreign aid workers. Two or three new amputees were being made daily by land mines left over from decades of armed conflict. Here was an opportunity to enter the country to do something useful while pursuing my own photographic interests.
Phnom Penh was perhaps the last great imperial city built as European global colonization was winding down, or at least changing its shape during the second half of the twentieth century. Apparently under an illusion that they would be staying forever, the French built a magnificent European city for a population of over one million that collapsed overnight following the 1975 takeover of the country and its capitol by the Khmer “Rouge”. Foreigners, doctors, and anyone with cash or connections, fled with their families if they saw what was coming.
Within twenty-four hours of the Khmer Rouge’s arrival, everyone in Phnom Penh had been forced outside the city to vast “re-education” camps. There followed four years in which waterlines, sewers, telephone and electrical infrastructure, and almost anything relating to the modern world was systematically destroyed. Between 1975 and 1979, nearly two million Cambodians were tortured and killed.
Apparently the plan was to return to some sort of communal “pure” pre-colonial paradise; speaking a foreign language could lead to death. In 1979, four years into an orgy of brutal killing, the bizarre dream of the Khmer Rouge collapsed when the Vietnamese Army marched in to stop the insanity. When I arrived in January of 1991, traumatized lives were returning to something closer to normal in this stately decaying shell that a decade after the fall of the Khmer Rouge had a population of less than 100,000. A measure of peace and stability was present and the onslaught of free market capitalism had yet to begin. Cultural treasures were being restored; traditional arts and music were again practiced and taught to children. Apart from the boulevards, roundabouts and buildings, bizarre traces of a lasting French influence mingled with ancient Khmer roots, seen in fashion, food, and sometimes in faces.
My companion Sally Davis and I were the guests of the government in a recently renovated aerie-like fifth floor corner balcony suite at the once-stately Monorom Hotel. Beyond a few hours each day of teaching at the Wat Tan National Prosthetics Center, we were free to explore the city. Whenever we returned to the Monorom, an attendant was waiting to provide for our exclusive use of a barely functioning ancient art-deco elevator, and to wash and guard our motorcycle, which the hotel insisted I drive in and park, inside the grand but seedy mahogany and marble lobby.
It is no exaggeration to say that my circumstances were as marvelous, unlikely and productive as any a one-legged photographer could hope to find in such an interesting twilight zone.