The tenth edition of Photo Phnom Pen 2019 will open at the French Institute of Cambodia, which remains the main partner, on October 24, 2019.
It will be both an opportunity to remember this incredible adventure that has made the festival a reference, an important moment of exchange between Asian and European creators and the platform that has allowed the emergence of a "school" - but they are all different in their aesthetics - of Cambodian photographers, from the three generations who followed the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge period.

On the wall of the Embassy of France, a symbolic place for the festival, will be exhibited the ten most important contemporary Cambodian photographers, to pay tribute to them and also to highlight the progress made in the field of photography in the country in such a short time. At the French Institute of Cambodia, whose exterior wall will offer large-scale “photos souvenir” of past editions, Mak Remissa, the reference artist, will unveil for the first time ten self-portraits painted in oil declining his years as a press photographer, he will exhibit with ten of the photographers who, in residence, gave their vision of the city of Sète at the invitation of the festival ImageSingulières and also photographs of family albums transformed with painting by artist Kong Vollak.

Another Cambodian reference Pha Lina will exhibit his symbolic work on the illegal exploitation of Kro Nhoung, so popular in China and for which poor Cambodians take the risk, by crossing illegally the Thai border, to be slaughtered by the border police and the army guarding the passage between the two countries.

If the spaces which, in an amicable way, host the exhibitions of the festival will still be at the rendezvous, there will be some novelties, of which one in full center, very close to the National Museum, for nice surprises.

On the occasion of this tenth edition a new partnership with the Delegation of European Union will permit us to exhibit on their walls, outside, near the Monument of Independence, ten European photographers who have already participated in PPP and which each offer an image echoing the concerns around climate change and the environment. As part of this collaboration, we will have again the Intersection program which brings together five European and five Cambodian photographers working on the same topic and, for the first time, in Siem Reap, at the excellent Batia Sarem Gallery, the presentation of ten Cambodian photographers, from the most prestigious to the youngest.

We will continue the presentation in the public space, with four exhibitions in Koh Pich (Diamond Island), meeting place of the youth of the capital with, again, a dialogue between
European and Asian artists. And, always in the same spirit, we will return in the high schools and colleges of the city center with the exhibitions full of cold, ice and poetry, as much as questions of the environment of Charles Xelot and Céline Clanet.

Asia will be represented with the spectacular photographs of bicycle cemeteries shared in China by Wu Guoyong, by the philosophical and poetical work of the Korean Jun Ahn who gives vertigo and gravitates apples, by the delicate colors of the work of Vietnamese Dat Vu and the beautiful reflection on photography, light and space of Thai artist Viriya Chotpanyavisut. Grâce à
Thanks to Manit Sriwanichpoom, who will give a lecture on his research on photographic archival in his country, we will be able to present at Bophana Center color photographs - and some in black and white - of Khmer Rouge and Khmer refugees in the camps in Thailand by photojournalist Senee Mongkol.

We will have, exceptionally, three evenings of screening and will change places, from the French Lycée René Descartes to the new space of the Future Factory in the center and, of course, the French Institute where, the first evening, we will present a great moment around staged photography with Japanese Shoji Ueda and French Bernard Faucon accompanied by live music.
As always, conferences, screenings and portfolio reviews will be part of the first week that will open with the traditional visit of the exhibitions by the parade of forty tuk-tuk driving in a cool atmosphere the first visitors.