15 years! It has therefore been 15 years since Photo Phnom Penh was born on the initiative of Alain Arnaudet, then director of the French Cultural Center. A festival which had the dual ambition of establishing exchanges between European and Asian artists and of promoting, in a small country still scarred by the murderous madness of the Khmer Rouge regime, the emergence of a new generation of photographers. Deal. In 2008, it was difficult to find four Cambodian photographers to exhibit, today, while we favor newcomers, we could exhibit a few dozen. They are also regularly shown abroad, in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific area. In 2008, 90% of visitors were expatriates, today it is the opposite and the many volunteers – whom I would like to thank once again, without them the festival would not exist – prove that photography has become a real center of interest, among young people among others. And the exchange between cultures has taken on a real educational dimension in a country where training in photography is still not seriously considered.

Now organized by Photo Phnom Penh Association, an independent Cambodian NGO, the festival benefits from its partners from the beginning which are the Institut français Paris, the Institut français du Cambodge and the delegation of the European Union in Cambodia. And it remains on the same editorial line by favoring the exchange and showing the new emerging Cambodian artists.

For the 2023 edition we are happy to have a new guest country and, to maintain the alternation between Europe and Asia, it is Taiwan (ROC) which, after the Swiss Confederation last year, will offer us the point of views of five of its contemporary photographers. With their diversity, inscribed in the history of photography as in its recent developments, they will present the vitality of the image in their country.

At the French Institute, ten years of work by Kim Hak, who traveled in all parts through his beloved Cambodia, reminds us that the country is more than just Angkor Wat and the Khmer Rouge Killing Field. A work on landscape which underlines the diversity of the soil and which will dialogue with the documentary approach with the subtle colors of Olivia Gay in the East of France. Denis Dailleux, who has the honor of the great wall of the French Embassy, offers us an extract from his 30 years of memories in Egypt in warm and vibrant tones and a new work, just as rich, in India where he immersed himself in the largest flower market in Kolkata. The young Cambodian Hul Kanha will present her new works, between photography and painting and, at the Bophana center, which has hosted the festival since its beginnings, we will come back as it should in this place of rich archives, on the history of the country. With the photographs Alan Crumlish took in 1989, ten years after the fall of the Khmer rouge regime. And to go back to present, we will present the colors of the two series of Chhen Kimhong looking at the bus stops, by night, before and during COVID 19.

There will of course be the traveling exhibition on the tuk-tuks, the visit to the exhibitions in the same tuk-tuks for a grand city tour, three screening evenings, debates, round tables, lecture of portfolios and, more than everything, meetings and friendship.

15 years after its creation Photo Phnom Penh is very much alive and just waiting to develop, in a troubled and unstable period.