Assignment: Phnom Penh

Thirty years ago, this would have conjured images of dusty war zones and killing fields, AK-47's and the Khmer Rouge.

Prison cells at the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh


Part of a journalist's time here might also be spent hanging out in a place like the Foreign Correspondents'Club (the FCC for short - and it's not the image posted above!). Though the current FCC along Sisowath Road only dates back to the UNTAC days in the early 90's, it isn't hard to imagine that its cream-colored walls oozing with colonial nostalgia dates back to the war years. Back in my hobbyist days, I would dream of hanging out in a place like this after a hard day of shooting, my cameras stowed nearby while having beers with fellow photographers.

Last Saturday I did just that. But the adventure feeling wasn't complete, though, because I wasn't photographing soldiers.

I was photographing fashion designers.



Romyda Keth, designer of the Khmer label Ambre.

But hey, this is a good thing for Cambodia. If a photographer still has to go here to cover war, a decade after order was supposedly established, this would mean that there hasn't been much improvement since then.