H.O.P.E RECONNECT

A Nation Helps Find 350 Faces.

Do You Recognize These Children? 🇰🇭

In 2007, I spent days crossing Cambodia with a camera and a tuk-tuk. No schedule. No fixers. Just the road.

I photographed 350+ children — in orphanages, street schools, floating villages, hospitals, rice paddies, dusty roads. Children running barefoot through schoolyards with a freedom that luxury resorts will never manufacture. A boy gripping a microphone like he was about to change the world. Girls waving through fences with smiles that needed no translation.

Those children are now adults. Mid-twenties to early thirties. Some have university degrees. Some have their own families. Some have left Cambodia entirely.

I want to find them.

THE ORIGIN

How This Started

2007. I was a photographer based in Bangkok. I had just completed a major project for Philippe Starck's resort in Phuket when Mitch Webber, Director of Ogilvy Action Bangkok, proposed something entirely different: "Come to Cambodia. There are children you need to meet."

IThe entry point: Sunrise Cambodia — an organization founded by Geraldine Cox in 1993, caring for over a thousand vulnerable, trafficked, and abandoned children across three decades. But the photographs extend far beyond Sunrise's walls. I documented children everywhere I went — in the streets, in classrooms, in markets, on roads no tourist has ever seen.

We had planned a charity calendar. 100% of proceeds going to the Siem Reap hospital and local schools. The series received an Honorable Mention at the International Photography Awards 2007.

Then a competing agency in Singapore took the brief. The calendar was never produced.

The photographs went dormant. For nineteen years.

THE SEARCH

This Is Where You Come In.

I'm publishing hundreds of photographs from 2007 — week by week — across dedicated galleries on this page.

Look carefully. You might recognize a face. A place. A smile.

If you recognize anyone in these photographs — if you ARE one of these children — if you are a parent, a relative, a neighbor, a teacher — if you grew up in Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, or Sihanoukville between 2005 and 2010 — if you know someone who did:

Fill out the form below. It takes two minutes.

Every identification brings us one step closer to completing the circle.

Every share multiplies our chances.

THE PROJECT

H.O.P.E — The 20-Year Return

H.O.P.E stands for Happiness, Obstinacy, Purpose, Education.

Happiness — the joy radiating from every child's face, despite everything around them.

Obstinacy — a photographer who kept these images for nineteen years and returns to complete the circle.

Purpose — the conviction that art must serve people, not markets.

Education — the concrete legacy that organizations like Sunrise Cambodia deliver every single day.

In 2027, twenty years after those weeks in Cambodia, I return. Not to repeat what I did. To finish what was started.

The project is transmedia: photography exhibitions, monumental building-facade installations inspired by JR and Barbara Kruger, a bilingual educational book in Khmer and English, a feature-length documentary, and community health campaigns. After outdoor display, decommissioned installation materials will be transformed by Cambodian sewing schools into bags and accessories — a circular economy where art becomes material resource for the communities it depicts.

A portion of funds generated by H.O.P.E will support community programs and partner organizations in Cambodia.

Browse the Photographs

New selections posted every week. Click a gallery to view the full set.

[GALLERY ONE — Siem Reap, 2007] First selection. Villages, schools, orphanages. 50+ photographs.

[GALLERY TWO — Sunrise Cambodia, 2007] ← NEW: the Sunrise-dedicated page The children of Sunrise Cambodia. 150+ photographs from inside the orphanage, the classrooms, the courtyards. This gallery is dedicated to the organization that made everything possible.

[GALLERY THREE — Coming Soon] Streets, markets, hospitals. The Cambodia beyond the walls.