H.O.P.E RECONNECT - On The Road · Vol. I · Siem Reap
On The Road · Vol. I · Siem Reap 2007
Day 4. A French photographer travelling by tuk-tuk through Siem Reap and the countryside around it, with a camera in one hand and a bag of keychains in the other.
Every time I photographed someone — a child running out of a house, a family at a market stall, a merchant pausing between sales, a patient in the hospital corridor — I gave them a keychain. Not money. A keychain. A small thank you for letting me into a moment of their life. Some children laughed at the unexpected gift. Some adults held it tight in their hand, like something rare.
This first volume covers the streets of Siem Reap, the road through the villages, food markets along the way, the water near Tonlé Sap, and a passage through the local hospital where children waited with their families.
The children in these photographs were between three and fifteen years old. Today they are young adults aged twenty-two to thirty-four. The adults are now in their thirties and forties — some still in the same villages, still on the same roads, still working at the same markets.
A note on these photographs. Many of these images are still in colour — and that is intentional. Sometimes a face is hard to recognise after twenty years. But the colour of a uniform, the pattern on a sarong, a familiar shop front, the corner of a hospital ward — these can trigger a memory that a face alone cannot. And the adults in these photographs matter just as much as the children. A merchant. A grandmother. A nurse. A father pushing a cart. They may recognise themselves first, then help us find the children who once stood beside them.
If you remember a French man with a camera handing you a keychain — somewhere on a road, in a market, in a village, in a hospital — this might be you. Please fill out the form below. Every identification matters.
© Ludovic Cazeba / CAZEBA 2007 — All Rights Reserved
Do You Recognize These Children?
You scrolled through the photographs. Did you recognize someone? Fill out the form — it takes two minutes. Every name helps us reconnect.
