Day three in the apartment has been as wonderful as the first two so far. How can I complain when I’m typing this blog outside in the five o’clock light overlooking the surrounding neighborhood and into the leafy National Museum grounds? I guess it’s kind of like the apartments that overlook the Natural History Museum in New York, only on a much smaller scale. But as nice as those apartments are, even the residents of those buildings probably can’t sit out in eighty-degree weather to watch the sunset in November. The past couple of days have really made me fall in love with Phnom Penh, as nice weather and a terrace with a view is all I ever really need. I feel like I finally have a home and am getting to take advantage of more of the things that go with really living here. The past few days have been the kind of days when I just stop and realize where I am and how exciting it is to be here.
At the same time, my days have become much busier all of a sudden. Between moving, unpacking, keeping up with the student essays that keep coming in, and getting ready to pick Leslie up at the boat dock from her trip up from Saigon, I’ve been keeping busy. Little things like trying to figure out where Leslie’s going to sleep when we’ve been scrambling just to get sheets and new mattresses for the new place have been keeping me entertained. At the same time, by coincidence, this also seems to have been the weekend when friends of friends are in town who I’ve wanted to meet and when Meta House is showing an interesting sounding documentary tonight about squatter evictions here in Phnom Penh.
But it’s been a great kind of busy. For example, I went to Psat Thmai (Central Market) for the whole morning today and still ended up not getting all of the things I had come to pick up. It is much more fun to go to a market with things to buy than it is otherwise. I had to get towels, new linens, toiletry holders, and other things for around the apartment. Additionally, I could browse the market, and if I found something interesting or cool looking, I no longer had to think about how I would fit that additional thing in my bags, which I would eventually be moving, but got to have fun picturing where in the apartment I could put it. I ended up unexpectedly picking up some interesting woven fabrics to cover some of the chairs and to line shelves with. In general, there’s something very exciting about going to a market with an open mind towards furnishing an apartment. I also, of course, picked up a few more DVDs.
As I’ve been mentioning before and am going to blog about more extensively soon, the city is constantly changing around me. I came with the expectation of doing something different, of learning about a new place, of trying to do something productive and inspiring in my classroom, of making connections with residents here, and of having the opportunity to take lots of pictures on a regular basis, but I didn’t expect to be put in the middle of a study in urban planning.
There is an old French colonial house diagonally across the street from us on the corner that I had noticed when we first looked at this place. It’s got the classic red tiled roof and yellow walls that I can only seem to describe as French Colonial Yellow, a kind of mustardy color that’s on all of the old buildings and only seems to improve as it accumulates grime and starts to peel. This fairly sizeable house sits on the corner, surrounded by a columned perimeter fence with wrought iron bars in between each pillar. It has overhanging porches jutting from the building, with decorative railings and roof supports. The second floor is in slightly better shape than the first, with fresher “colonial yellow” paint, but it blends very well into the rest of the building since all of the house’s stucco, paint, and detailing appear as though they have been patched and worked on piecemeal over the years, giving the house a very pleasant, layered look. The second floor also has a plant-lined balcony with outdoor lights and has been rented by some Australian expats for a number of years. Below, the space was divided into about eight small Cambodian apartments, with two of them running very popular street stall-style restaurants in the dirt yard between the building and the surrounding sidewalks. It made for a very aesthetically interesting scene, with potted plants draping down from above and street food carts nestled among the grand colonial arches and terraces with many Khmer diners sitting in the bright blue and red plastic chairs that are so common in the developing world. There was so much texture to the scene.
I’m not sure if he’s Cambodian or an expat, but someone has slowly been purchasing the apartments that make up the first floor one by one as the families have moved elsewhere or as his offers have become high enough that the current residents have been willing to sell. Well, apparently, this multi-year process finally came to a close two weeks ago, and in the time between when I first looked at this apartment and actually moved in, the renovation has started and the first floor has begun to become one again. There’s fresh stucco on the wall, all of the tables and chairs are gone from the small yard, there are new wooden shutters hanging from the windows, and there’s the start of what looks like will be an elegant shed or guest bedroom being constructed off to the side of the left front side of the building.
The renovation looks like it’s being done appropriately and very well. There’s also a wing sticking off the rear of the house that still has a couple Khmer families living in it, and one street restaurant remains and fills the side yard and area with activity at around dinnertime under the newly installed streetlights. Overall, I’m sure that the renovations will preserve the building further into the future than today’s care will allow it, and it will return some of the architecture back to its initial state and integrity. But with the renovation goes some of the character that’s accumulated over the years and the interesting hodgepodge of residents and uses. So although the renovations are already well underway (construction here moves faster than anywhere in the US), I wanted to photograph the building both in this state of transition and while it still had some of its former character.
I waited until the early evening light to go over and start snapping, and the sun came from behind the clouds just before it set, in time for my picture taking. There were lots of angles to shoot from and lots of stuff to take in. There were the older sections remaining, the parts that were mid-renovation, the construction materials, and the people still working into the early evening sun. I started snapping pictures as fast as I could and tried to get in as many as possible before the light disappeared. Soon I had gotten the attention of the tuk-tuk drivers sitting on the corner, the men renovating the house, the residents still living in the back wing, and some kids playing nearby. One of the kids, a boy of probably about seven or eight came up and started watching behind my back. Then, he walked in front and started posing in front of the front gates of the house and encouraging me to snap away. At the time, I was using my medium format camera, which has no digital display since it uses film, so when he came to see how he looked in my pictures, I had nothing to show him. I quickly switched cameras and motioned that we would do it again. He was both a great subject for my pictures, and now I could also show him the end pictures on the digital screen. He loved it and started screaming and laughing when he saw the images. Quickly, his father came over, then his mother, and then the boy asked his mom to hold his baby sibling so that they could both be in the picture together. Soon, I had the whole family posing for pictures in front of this wonderful halfway-renovated old colonial villa. They seemed more than happy to be included in my shots, and they got a kick out of seeing the resulting pictures on the display. Soon, even the tuk-tuk drivers were calling from just outside the wall to come out and take pictures of them. What could have been an awkward situation of me trying to sneak in pictures of these people at work ended up being a bonding moment and an exciting experience for both me and them.
One thing I’ve discovered by now is that letting other people use your cameras and take a few pictures quickly diffuses any tension that sometimes exists when you barge into someone else’s life and start taking pictures of them. Not that there was any awkwardness, but I offered to the boy to take a few pictures with my digital camera while I worked with my film one. That sent him over the edge with excitement, and he quickly started becoming an opinionated photographer who required that everyone in his family and all of the neighboring families and construction workers pose for him. It was great to see his delight, and then his Dad came over a little shyly to ask if he could try as well. My little bit of Khmer was certainly tested, but it’s amazing how much you can communicate with a few basic words and wild gestures. He was as delighted as his son, and soon they were snapping pictures of each other, of me, and of the house, as I was doing the same with the other camera. For me, so much of what I perceived to be my own awkwardness dissipated when they started asking me to pose for their pictures as well. It no longer felt as weird for me to take pictures as them, and we were now all taking pictures together rather than me photographing them.
Next thing I knew, I was being invited to come into the house to take pictures. It was very cool to have this opportunity that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise had. Most of the dividing walls have already been knocked out, and it’s well on its way to being restored to its former glory. The original intricate tile work is still intact, and there are soaring columns and arches between the high-ceiling rooms.
I left and came back later at night to take some further shots with my tripod. They quickly spotted me, and I let them borrow my cameras again. A memory card is easy enough to erase if I need to, and some of the shots will be worth keeping to remember the experience and to have some of their work. I couldn’t, however, convey the fact that they had to hold still when posing for a picture at night. I also tried to explain to the father how to tilt the tripod head since I noticed him tipping the whole tripod to change the camera angle. As soon as I finished, he went back to simply moving the tripod and then holding it the air, meaning that all of his pictures were simply blurred streaks, but I also realized that it was probably just such a treat to use a camera for what I imagine was his first time.
And what could have been an awkward situation turned into a way to meet some of my neighbors and have a great couple of hours. I’m getting ready to head back for the morning light so that I can shoot some different parts of the building and am sure they’ll be waiting for me.
PS - Since I’m unable to post right now, I can tell you that I ended up going to the eviction documentary with a few friends later in the night, which was well worth the trip. It was a locally made film, and we were technically seeing the first viewing, which gave the whole event a festive air. Evictions are a big problem right now in Phnom Penh and in Cambodia in general, and there’s usually a guarantee that you can find an article about the topic in one of the daily papers. The government is essentially relocating large numbers of poor residents in prime areas of cities to the outskirts without adequately compensating them, causing these already poor people to be shoved further down the ladder and forced to relocate to areas with even less access to opportunity.
The topic alone is fascinating, but in watching the documentary, I realized that I had actually photographed the very area that they were focusing on that was being cleared, not knowing what it actually was at the time. During my first week here, I had noticed an interesting looking area of half-torn down apartment buildings and small, one-room houses and was drawn to them out of my interest in photographing architecture and landscape in transition. Soon after beginning to shoot, I noticed many people gathering and a person shouting into a megaphone, and shortly thereafter I noticed police motorbikes lining the streets. I decided that this was a good time to disappear from the area, but I was excited to see these same scenes in the documentary, as this area, the struggle of these residents, and the partial success of their organizing was the main topic of the presentation. It put my few pictures from this day in context, and the nice thing about being here is that more and more of my photographs are having more of a back-story for me. They are starting to be more than just aesthetic, as I begin to learn more about the issues surrounding what I photograph.
At the same, this example only highlighted how much can be going on right in front of mine or anyone else’s faces that we are completely oblivious to. Any number of people living in or visiting the city could have walked through this area, but how many of them knew about what was really happening? I didn’t, even when there was an outright protest about it happening at the time. It certainly put into perspective for me what we see with our eyes versus what is constantly happening in the lives of those around us that we don’t understand or even know about it.