Unbearable witness

They are a terrifying sight: exhausted, emaciated, eyes widened with fear, bruises marking their features, arms and necks chained. These are victims of the Cambodian genocide, photographed before they were tortured and executed at a secret prison known as S-21 by the Khmer Rouge, the Maoist forces led by Pol Pot in Cambodia during the reign of terror that lasted from 1975 to 1979. They are the subject of Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia's Killing Fields, an exhibition of 100 photographs on view until Jan. 14, 2001, at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, its only venue in this country. In 1998, as a curator at the CMCP, I was involved in the decision to bring this painful exhibition to Ottawa. I argued then, and still believe, that we must not avert our eyes from these faces.

The Cambodian genocide remains one of the most horrific atrocities of the past century. In April 1975, following a bloody five-year civil war, Pol Pot's forces seized control of the country and initiated a brutal campaign to reinvent Cambodian society. Among other strategies, they evacuated people from all towns and cities to serve as agricultural labourers, banned all printed materials and systematically persecuted Buddhists and ethnic Vietnamese. Students, intellectuals and professionals were particular targets. Only 40 of the approximately 270 physicians who remained in Cambodia after 1975 survived by 1979. In total, an estimated 1.5 million men, women and children — approximately one-seventh of the country's population — died as a result of working conditions, starvation, malnutrition and lack of medical care. Roughly 200 000 of that number were executed as enemies of the state. No Cambodian family was left unscarred.1

The Khmer Rouge reserved what were perhaps their most gruesome tactics for S-21, the secret detention centre established at a former high school in Tuol Sleng, a suburb of Phnom Penh. In what had been classrooms, captives — largely party members accused of treason — were interrogated, tortured and executed as "counterrevolutionaries." Of the 14 200 men, women and children incarcerated at S-21, only 7 survived. The Khmer Rouge maintained detailed files on each detainee; these included a (forced) confession and an identification photograph.

If the Khmer Rouge intended these photographs as evidence that their "enemies from within" had been crushed, today they stand as one of the most visceral condemnations of Pol Pot's regime. The victims portrayed are often young; most are men, but women and children were also executed at Tuol Sleng. According to historian David Chandler, the majority were rank-and-file party members drawn under suspicion for such “misdeeds” as missing their families.2 These were ordinary people trapped in a nightmare.

We know about the making of these photographs largely from Nhem Ein, S-21's chief photographer, who discussed his experiences with Robin McDowell of Associated Press.3 The son of poor bean farmers, Nhem Ein joined the Khmer Rouge at age 10. Five years later he was sent to Shanghai to be trained as a photographer, filmmaker and cartographer. On his return, at age 16, he was named chief photographer at Tuol Sleng, in charge of five apprentices. Over the course of less than three years, he photographed and oversaw the documentation of thousands of people. Among them was a close relative, whom Nhem Ein, fearing for his own life, did not acknowledge. He was also charged with photographing some prisoners after their deaths and producing propagandistic images of Cambodian society.

According to Nhem Ein, captives were brought to Tuol Sleng in blindfolds and chained or roped together. An identification number was pinned on each prisoner. (These numbers do not represent a catalogue of S-21's entire human sacrifice: they were recycled every 12 hours. Consequently, the same numbers are repeated in numerous photographs.) Immediately before a photograph was taken, the captive's blindfold was torn off, adding to his or her sense of disorientation and fear. As many as 600 people arrived at S-21 daily and, as Nhem Ein confirmed, “Those who arrived at the facility had no chance of living.” Nhem Ein exposed, developed and printed film against a background of incessant — and unanswered — screams and pleas. The identification photograph would eventually be added to the prisoner's file, a tidy summary of a life destroyed. The Khmer Rouge's emphasis on bureaucratic record-keeping and Nhem Ein's story exemplify what Hannah Arendt famously described as the "banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem.4 Whereas evil had previously been framed as deviance, Arendt suggested — more disturbingly — that it could be produced by the mindlessly obedient actions of ordinary people.

In 1979, after Vietnamese forces drove the Khmer Rouge from power, the former high school was transformed once again, this time into the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide. Interrogation rooms were left intact, blood still staining the walls and floors; maps, paintings depicting torture, extracts of forced "confessions," photographs, victims' clothing, torture devices and mounds of bones fill the compound.

But, in the intervening years, the detailed files were dispersed, rendering the subjects of many of the photographs anonymous. The approximately 7000 negatives left at Tuol Sleng were covered with mildew and dust in old file cabinets. Between 1993 and 1996 two American photographers, Christopher Riley and Doug Niven, working in association with Cornell University, cleaned, catalogued and printed the negatives. They subsequently presented them in a range of journals, the 1996 book The Killing Fieldsf5 and in the current exhibition, which has been shown in Europe and the United States.

Thus, over the past four years, these tragic images have been brought to a wide public. Along the way, they have also engendered a good deal of controversy. Largely, critics have been concerned either that the exhibition diminishes the gravity of the subject by presenting the photographs as art or, by reproducing them, effectively replicates the Khmer Rouge's subjugation of its victims. It does neither. Instead, Facing Death informs a wide public about those atrocities and, equally, functions as a critique. The exhibition acknowledges that photographs operate at a number of levels, not solely as aesthetic works (although art itself can be a powerful means of critique). Reproducing photographs or words is not tantamount to endorsing their original message: all forms of expression are open to multiple interpretations. In this case, the anguish and fear apparent in these photographs provides a devastatingly vivid account of the Cambodian genocide. Moreover, the publication and exhibition of these photographs provide important — if wrenching — resources for people of Cambodian descent who want to find information about missing family members and to address the nightmare of those years. In short, Facing Death tries to fulfil the moral imperative articulated by the Primo Levi in his memoirs of Auschwitz: to tell the story, to bear witness.

Figure. Untitled. From Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia's Killing Fields. Photo by: Photographic Resource Center, Boston University

Figure. Untitled. From Facing Death: Portraits from Cambodia's Killing Fields. Photo by: Photographic Resource Center, Boston University