Gardens of Cheoung Ek
In the fall of 2008 I traveled through Cambodia, an astounding country to which I hope to return. Asides from the incredible depth of colour of the landscape; the sheer scale & beauty of the temples of Ankor Wat, the remnants of French colonial architecture of Phnom Penh - the thing that most struck me was the absence of Cambodians my age. An entire generation is missing.
Growing up I remember my Grandparents speaking in hushed tones of the “Lost Generation”, the men killed in the 1914-1918 World War, which included my great-grandfather and great-uncles. It takes a long time for a nation to recover from such a loss. How long will it take for Cambodia to recover from the genocide? A country that in 1979 had no Doctors, Teachers, Dentists and Lawyers left?
Choeung Ek, once a former orchard about 17km south of Phnom Penh, is better known as “The Killing Fields” where the Khmer Rouge regime executed about 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. Mass graves containing 8,895 bodies were discovered here after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Only a third of the site has been excavated. Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial garden. Buddhist monks tend flower beds around a stupa, filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. Plants and grasses now cover the pits that remain from which the bodies were exhumed, like a bizarre arrangement of ornamental ponds. This series of images is in memory of the lost generation of Cambodians.
Four of these images are available as a limited edition folio, with the proceed going to NGO Cambodian Women's and Children’s charities. Please contact rowenadringinfo@gmail.com for more details.