Cambodia Journals | Mondulkiri, 03 September 2019
We are coming to the end of the time we have spent discovering and experiencing Cambodia. We stubbornly chose to do it off the tourist path. We have left behind many (certainly all) of the sights of this country that consume ink in the pages of travel guidebooks: Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, the Tomle Sap, Banteay Srei, and on and on.
We also know very well that we would not converse with those who have already been there with a GrandiViaggi contract jealously guarded in their diary.
And we also know very well that, ours, is not a merit.
It is simply our work, what we have felt and chosen to do, and that this stay in Cambodia is also the result of a choice: that of traveling the world and telling the story by experiencing it firsthand, without the filters and advice of a tourist organization, with the knowledge that we might as well have made a trip for nothing or, simply, not understand anything of what we would have seen and experienced. A journey, this and all others, is based on meeting people before encountering the place. By seeking dialogue long before asking questions.
Meetings: the privilege of the (photo)reporter
It is the job of the (photo)reporter, my job and that of others, and it is the most beautiful job in the world because it forces you to look and allows you not to judge.
It is a profession comprised of encounters, relationships with people and environments, facts and events, the world you know and the world you transform.
But it is not only that, but it is also much more: it is having found your position in the world and, out of a kind of gratitude, using your photography and the stories you live and collect to show that, despite a thousand miseries, the world – made up of individuals and their environments – is a place yet to be discovered, capable of wonder.
A place of changes and exchanges, of dialogues not necessarily spoken in the same idiom.
You spend almost 5 hours in a minibus with more than 20 people including peasants, women wearing headscarves, boys in dresses and sneakers, and workers with hoes on their backs. No one speaks your language, but everyone addresses you as their equal. Someone offers you water, someone a rice distillate of criminal gradation, another some dried larvae bought along the road to stop the holes in your stomach.
And in those moments, despite the tiredness, the heat, the stench, the desire to arrive, you realise that these feelings of yours are their feelings because – even if they are used to it (perhaps) – they too are sweating, they too are tired, they too want to arrive, and you too stink. And they feel it.
But in spite of all that, that place, in that instant, is where you want to be. And you can think of nothing else but being there because that is where you have chosen to be.
Photography is not a right, but a gift
Sometimes I wonder how I would behave if I were the subject of a street photographer’s shot. If in our bright, orderly, organized cities, a guy came along, distracting me from my thoughts and the polite haste we tend to always drag along even when we have nothing to do, and made me waste that precious time we think we never have to ask for a portrait. “Sometimes I wonder how I would act,” and I find that a great question.
And I don’t possess a great answer.
With a camera in hand, WE often feel that photography is a duty or a right. Meanwhile, photography is simply a gift. A gift we receive.
It is the granting of a fragment of life, and WE, as photojournalists, have a duty to make that instant worthy of the homage we are receiving. Recognise, with humility, the privilege of the encounter.
A special encounter
Speaking of chance and fortuitous encounters, in Phnom Penh I had the privilege of meeting and getting to know a “special” person, with contagious serenity and genuine helpfulness: Francis.
We emailed each other before my departure despite never having met or known each other in person before: we were a mere profile among the many contacts in the social networking cauldron.
To him goes a special thanks, for all that he is, without any fear of showing it.
Thank you Francis!
