Taking pictures here has been challenging, not because there aren’t a number of interesting subjects but actually because there are so many things that I want to take pictures of that it’s sometimes frustrating when they don’t turn out the way they feel in real life. It’s been difficult to actually get pictures that really replicate the feel that exists in real life. I have an ever-expanding list of sites and ideas for photos, but sometimes what is so meaningful around me just doesn’t come across that way in my photographs. Phnom Penh is probably the perfect size for me, as it’s big enough that I don’t think I’ll ever run out of subjects but small enough that I can really get to know different areas, neighborhoods, people, and architecture well enough to feel like I’m not shooting randomly but am slowly capturing various aspects of the city.
Taking pictures is sometimes hard here because there’s usually so much going on in every view that it becomes it difficult to frame pictures in a way that captures this feeling without becoming ambiguous and without taking such a wide view that everything becomes background. But I’m loving this aspect of the city: that it’s hard but also exciting to try to capture the place in an effective way on film.
Additionally, with the amount of poverty here and the number of what we would consider “private” aspects of people’s lives being lived in the street, there’s also always a question of how many of the scenes are worth capturing on film and how many are better left in memory, without violating the minimum amount of space and privacy that some of these people are already barely clinging to. How close am I willing to go to a subject? How much do I want to stick a camera in their face? And how much do I feel comfortable pulling out a nice camera right in front of them, when they don’t even have an indoor space to live in?
All of these challenges are, of course, in addition to the complications of simply choosing a good subject in the first place. Will it make an interesting picture? Am I simply romanticizing the dilapidation and poverty more than it is in reality? Luckily, there’s a good combination of different subjects, from people to architecture, so I can always fall back on the other when one becomes dissatisfying or seems too intimidating. And as much as it’s been difficult and sometime frustrating here because I don’t always feel like my pictures are turning out like they feel in real life, I’ve loved photographing here because of this challenge. It’s not an “easy” city.
Additionally, I’ve begun piling the demands on myself. I’ve recently realized that I’ve become super demanding in terms of when I shoot. It evolved to be like this, so I didn’t actually recognize it until very recently. Essentially, anything resembling mid-day light in the slightest has been crossed off my list. As a result, I’ve been trying to keep my early mornings free and the time about 45 minutes before and after when you start needing a tripod free in the evening. Of course, this also means that the time when I allow myself to shoot is pretty limited. So whenever I have free time during those light conditions, I’m usually out there trying to get something. My notes on things to take pictures of going forward have also become very specific. For example, one item currently in my notebook is students playing soccer at my university on the dirt field shot from the roof of my teaching building at the time of day that falls during the ten minutes I have free between my two afternoon classes.
And since I’m here for a year, I’ve become pickier about other aspects of lighting conditions as well. I thought the rainy season was great for pictures. Because of the way the storms come through, the sky usually turns a deep gray, but there’s still sunlight shining below. Additionally, when things are constantly getting soaked, drying out, and becoming wet again, there’s lots of good contrast between the smoothness of the puddles and flooded plains and the rough nature of pretty much everything else here. The dampness also gave depth to details. Of course, it was a fine line between going out just before or after the storm came through and not getting stuck being drenched in the middle, but that challenge also made it exciting. It’s weird to think that a rainy afternoon used to be an expected part of my day. I’d expect to get wet on my ride back from school every afternoon. Now, though, I’m scrambling to get certain pictures not only at certain times of day but also at certain seasons in the year and before they completely dry out. Already, most things are dry, but the flooded areas still have about half of the water levels that they had at the end of the rainy season a few weeks ago. I find myself now hoping for a random storm to come through every once in a while to replenish the supply before it completely dries out, but it’s not seeming overly likely.
During every long trip, I always believe that there’s that one moment when you’re taking a series of pictures and realize you’ve gotten THE one. In China, it took about a month and a half of shooting before I had an evening and a subject in the countryside one weekend that became those pictures. A month and a half of shooting had all been practice and exercise so that I was ready for these subjects. The void between two elementary school dormitories, with mountains a small patch of corn in the background became the image for my thesis show postcard.
Well, I’m happy to say that I think I’ve gotten THE pictures of my first few months here this morning. I know that my photo professor Emmet would disagree. I told him this feeling of “knowing” that I had gotten a great picture in class one time, to which he replied that that would be impossible to know until I actually printed and saw it. To him, not only was part of the challenge printing, but also, who knows whether I had been able to effectively capture what I felt the picture looked like when I took it? Granted, I agree with the general philosophy of this view, but I would also strongly put forward that there are just some times when you know you’ve gotten something, and you do. (Later in the semester and after printing it, we both agreed that that photo I had told him about was my best of the semester).
Anyway, I went back to the house on the corner this morning, as I have for the past couple of mornings, and they’ve pretty much started expecting me after just the few days that this has become my habit. During my previous times inside the house, I noticed that, towards the back of the middle interior room, there were dark wooden doors that sealed an archway leading out into another large room filled with smoke and an appealing glow. I could see just enough through the crack between the two doors that I could tell that there were still many families back there and that the small stoop between the doors I was looking out of and the lowered floor of this “room” was filled with pots, pans, straw brooms, and some clothes. The back of the house seemed to kind of wrap around this back room, as there were single doors in the rooms flanking the main front-back corridor of the house that also led out to this small stoop in this “backroom.” Each of the side doors had substantial pad locks keeping the doors secure, and I didn’t want to push my invitation by trying to barge into this obvious living quarter behind the construction area.
But it held a very strong appeal, as the cracks between the doors were just big enough so that I could see this intense glow of decaying ochre paint and numerous wood fires heating various pots and pans but just small enough that I couldn’t quite see what was really back there. Additionally, the interior that I had seen was very appealing and interesting for its own reasons, but it was devoid of life, and after a couple of days, I was ready to move onto new subjects.
Although I had peaked through the doors many times, it was today that one of the kids I was taking pictures with simply walked to the back of the house, pushed open the doors, and invited me to walk in. What I had built up to be this mysterious backroom thriving with secret families turned out to actually be the exterior of the building covered by the overhang of one of the second floor balconies and then bound on the backside by a neighboring building. Yet it was as photographically (and otherwise) interesting as that mystical backroom had become in my mind.
The doors opened up into this back space bustling with women from the families neighboring families. All of them were cooking, either for their families or for the street restaurant run from the side of the house. I essentially stumbled into this indoor/outdoor space hemmed on four sides by different dividers that caused it to become its own, independent space. As I stepped out onto the intricately-tiled entry stairs (or exit stairs in this case), I could see the detailed bottom side of the second floor back balcony above me, painted the ochre of the rest of the house but lots more interesting because of the combination of smoke and weather that had accumulated and given it a deep hue that almost glowed in the early light. Behind me and on my left and right side for a few feet were the stucco walls and the four big wooden doors that led out from the back of the house and the two rear side rooms. Across from me were the doorways of the neighboring building, to my left was the “driveway” that led to the seating area of the restaurant, and to my right was a staircase from the second floor balcony with so much laundry hanging from its bottom side that it acted as a third solid wall.
From this perch on the stoop, I got the pictures I’ve been waiting for. Set among this background, the little girls who had been tagging along decided to start dressing up in their mothers’ shoes, hats, and handbags, which were hanging on pegs from the exterior walls. They were up high in the foreground on the stairs, while their mothers and grandmothers cooked below. Additionally, the boys began climbing all over the railings next to them. Looking out onto the whole scene would have been appealing enough, but this made it even better.
And now I feel satisfied that I got the pictures that I’ve been waiting for and think that I’m probably done photographing the house on the corner. I’ve now gotten almost every possible angle that I can think of…at least until I get an invitation from the Australians living upstairs to check out the upper floor.