WHAT SURVIVES_Caravan Magazine_Feb 2015

CARAVAN THE

WHAT SURVIVES PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIM HAK

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WHAT SURVIVES MEMENTOS FROM THE CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIM HAK

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n 2010, Kim Hak, then twenty-nine years old, joined his grandmother and some cousins on a trip to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. Under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, between 1975 and 1979, the site housed the infamous Security Prison 21, one of hundreds of killing centres across Cambodia established as part of a campaign of extermination targeted particularly at minorities and the intelligentsia. As many as twenty thousand people are thought to have lost their lives at the prison, and as many as three million in the genocide. Kim Hak’s grandmother could not bring herself to walk through the rooms and cells. “It shocked her,” Kim Hak said. “She just sat in the garden of the museum with her painful face.”

Kim Hak was born in 1981, and grew up in Battambang, in the north-west of the country, hearing terrifying stories of the Khmer Rouge’s reign. His parents, like millions of other Cambodians, were forced from their home and into work camps in the countryside as part of the regime’s attempt to achieve “agrarian socialism.” Each person’s past became a potentially lethal thing; people risked death, Kim Hak said, “if only one Khmer Rouge soldier found out who they are, especially well-educated people or former govern-

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ment or army officers.” Many abandoned all recognisable mementos. Instead, they imbued with their memories the few things they could keep—clothes, cooking and eating utensils, simple pieces of jewellery. Some families now hold these objects so dear that they pass them on as heirlooms.

These photographs are part of Kim Hak’s ongoing effort to document such souvenirs. “It is a race against the clock because living witnesses are gradually disappearing,” he said. His method is fairly simple: he shoots all items under natural light, always at the same time of day for uniformity, against a black background. The background, he said, is meant to make the objects more striking, and to signify the dark history they represent. Kim Hak’s focus on deeply personal stories sets his work apart from the many visual projects on the genocide that look explicitly at torture and death. He hopes these microcosmic stories add to the largely anonymous grand history of the genocide, and remind young people of the deeply personal losses their parents and grandparents suffered. That, he hopes, will help all generations of Cambodians speak openly of the Khmer Rouge era and so deal with the associated trauma, and serve as a warning against any repeat of its horrors.

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above: Singlet and piece of robe with lotus seedpod

This singlet and scrap of monk’s robe belonged to a lady named Gnet Yorn, who passed away in 2004, at the age of ninety-three.

Her father was Burmese and her mother Cambodian. Before the Khmer Rouge, she was a businesswoman who sold robes and accessories for Buddhist monks. opposite page: Kettle and chicken leg

previous spread: Sandal and footprint with thorns

These sandals belong to my father, Kim Hap. He got them just after the war so he could remember the darkness of that period.

People who lived through the Khmer Rouge regime recognise this type of sandal right away. My father told me, “Not everyone had sandals to wear. They were only distributed to Khmer Rouge soldiers and those who worked for them. Ordinary people had to walk barefoot even through thorns.”

This kettle belongs to my family, who live in Battambang. We have owned it since 1970, and still use it every day to boil water. When my parents were sent to the countryside to farm, they had to raise animals that they were not allowed to slaughter for themselves. My mother, Mo Rean, told me, “During the Khmer Rouge regime, we fed the chickens but could not eat them. Sometimes we stole a chicken at night and cooked it so we could survive. It’s a bittersweet memory but that’s why I keep this kettle and still use it: it holds so much memory.” Once, my father was very sick and weak, and my mother wanted him to have good food. So she took the risk of stealing a chicken. But my father was so afraid of them being killed as punishment that he did not dare eat the boiled chicken my mother brought him.

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Notebooks and a tooth

These notebooks also belonged to Gnet Yorn. Under Khmer Rouge rule, books were banned. If a soldier or an informer caught someone reading, the person was declared educated and immediately executed. Gnet Yorn took a big risk by keeping three notebooks in which she had written the Dharma—the teachings of the Buddha. She often hid herself to read the text at night.

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Scissors and hair

next spread: Pot and incense

This photograph was inspired by Seung Touch, a seventy-nineyear-old lady. Before the Khmer Rouge took power she was a dressmaker, and these are her scissors. The Khmer Rouge forced all girls and women to wear their hair short. No one could avoid this. Seung Touch used these scissors to cut the hair of her family members. When visiting her home one day, I saw her having her hair cut. So I asked her for permission to photograph a few discarded locks of her white hair.

This pot belonged to my grandmother, Huot, who passed away at the age of eighty-three a few years ago. It has been in my family for many generations. My grandmother used it to hold incense sticks when she prayed. She could not pray openly during the Khmer Rouge regime, since doing so was forbidden. But afterwards she kept using the pot during her prayers until the end of her life. Before departing, she gave it to me. Today, I do as she did, and light incense sticks in the pot when I pray.

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Silver belt and silk skirt

These are family heirlooms. My great-grandfather gave the belt to my grandfather, who later passed it on to my mother. My sister Kim Sreyroth, born in 1972, is the current owner. The belt was probably crafted in the nineteenth century, if not earlier.

My mother told me she started wearing it when she was fourteen years old. After the Khmer Rouge government fell, she wore it with this skirt of traditional silk, which she bought in Phnom Penh in 1983.

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Mess tin and canned fish

This military mess tin belongs to my father. It is from the 1970s, but he got it in 1980. After the Khmer Rouge fell, Cambodia remained unstable until a 1991 peace agreement ended a war with Vietnam that started under the regime. The agreement brought the UN in to hold a national election, in 1993. My father joined the Cambodian armed forces in 1980, and retired in 2008. Before the 1993 election, he fought Khmer Rouge troops entrenched in heavily mined jungles along the north-west border. They ate a lot of canned fish, since it was easy to carry and cook in the jungle.

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Fish oil and smoke

This bottle of fish oil belonged to Gnet Yorn, who also owned the notebooks and the singlet. Most people had no electricity during Khmer Rouge rule. For lighting, they used to burn fish oil, or any other type of oil that they could get.

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Canteen with banaba twigs, leaves and seeds

This military canteen, with its canvas cover, belongs to my father. Like the mess tin, it is from the 1970s, and my father got it in 1980.

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