Siem Reap, Takeo, 2013
Neak Sophal is seriously pursuing her exploration of contemporary Cambodian society. After a series of pictures in the countryside, in which she used the leaves of plants and trees to create portraits without faces in the landscape, she is now working in the city. Always putting the question of identity at the center of her work, Neak Sophal asked men and women to pose for her in the street, hiding their faces behind the objects that characterize them. Often these objects are related to their jobs.
Each one loses his or her identity behind that which ultimately characterizes all: their work. Choosing each time the perfect distance, without effect, the photographer builds a strange documentary series, an inventory of functions behind which the individual disappears. We get a sense of a rigid society, stress and no real possibility to escape. The choice of the backgrounds, their colors and textures make a beautiful collection, at the same time diverse and strict.
The question is direct and explicit: How are we identified nowadays? Merely by our job? By our social standing? The juxtapositions are telling: the woman who sells traditional headgear next to the man who sells American-style baseball caps, which actually come from China; the lady offering plastic baskets beside the one still selling wicker utensils; the rice farmer and the peddler with his Christmas wreathes; set against ever-present construction workers. Sophal highlights the city's transformation, the changes in modes of consumption, and worries about the devastating effects of globalisation. She does all this by simple, yet radical, efficient, apt, clear means. She forces us to acknowledge the confrontation through the disappearing faces, and she establishes a subtle connection to traditional scuplture, which is essential to the Cambodian culture she is revitalising.
Text by Christian Caujolle
