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Future Anterior, Volume 11, Number 1, Summer 2014, pp. 70-83 (Article)

P bl h d b n v r t f nn t PrDOI: 10.1353/fta.2014.0003

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1. The “photographic stage” at Ta Prohm, Angkor. Photograph by author.

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Future AnteriorVolume XI, Number 1Summer 2014

Entering Ta Prohm from the imposing East Gate, a long cause-way leads to the main temple structure. The forest has been cut back to provide easy access for tourists and halt the destruc-tive action of tree on stone. At certain points, however, this salvage work has not been possible and vast roots engulf the fragile buildings. These evocative scenes are among the most picturesque of what is a relentlessly photogenic site. They act as visual metonyms for Angkor Archaeological Park as a whole, but also for such abstract notions as the transience of human life or the hubris of civilization. At Ta Prohm, another layer of significance also guides photographic interest, namely the filming of Tomb Raider at the site. As if the aesthetic spectacle of the place were not enough, Angelina Jolie is called upon to give the location extra meaning, all of which has resulted in a peculiar phenomenon. At key junctures, wooden platforms have been erected to surround prominent trees that overwhelm the temple. Visitors gather at these stages and take it in turn to position themselves before or within the roots, striking odd poses (perhaps reminiscent of Lara Croft) as their companions photograph the scene. The preservation of the photogenic mo-ment and the preservation of the temple here go hand in hand, with recent conservation efforts reacting to the popularity of these photographic “hot spots.”

Such encounters are but the latest in a history of photog-raphy at the site that stretches back almost 150 years. While countless preservation initiatives have been enacted during this period, my focus here is on projects that are marginal to mainstream conservation and heritage practice, if not to the representation of Angkor more generally. The term “projects” is key to the analytical direction taken, as rather than consider individual images as discrete art- historical items, I am primar-ily interested in the sociocultural significance of photography as an activity and a medium for conveying and constructing certain ideas about the meaning and value of heritage sites. To use Elizabeth Edwards phrase, I address the “photography complex” rather than single pictures.1 In support of this, my illustrations document the “photographic life” of Angkor: the act of picture taking and the context of picture use, serving as a point of departure for assessing photography’s impact on the physical preservation of the site. These images pro-vide a further visual dimension of critical analysis toward the

Colin Sterling Photography, Preservation, and Ethics at Angkor

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overarching theme of how an “ethical” relationship between photography, preservation, and heritage at Angkor might work.

Despite its diffuse nature, ethical here should be taken to refer to something quite specific, namely the management (en-compassing care, protection, representation) of a heritage site for the sustained benefit of its most disadvantaged stakehold-ers. Within this process many different photographic practices will be carried out, few of which will directly affect or relate to the lives of the underprivileged. Certain work may, however, con-tribute, implicitly or explicitly, toward wider social dynamics. Operating at the margins of mainstream preservation practice yet often far more familiar to diverse audiences than the im-ages that result from conservation, restoration, and archaeo-logical research, the photography I am primarily interested in here embraces fine- art, travel, touristic, promotional, and charity- based endeavors. My contention is that such photo-graphic work may be simultaneously implicated in the percep-tion of preservation and the ethical value of a site, providing a powerful visual connection between practice and affect. This brief overview of pivotal photographic projects undertaken in and around Angkor acts as a testing ground for such a model.

The First PhotographsWhile French representational strategies would come to domi-nate visual knowledge of Angkor for much of the twentieth cen-tury, it was in fact a Scot who provided the first photographic record of the site. Motivated by Henri Mouhot’s well- known diary recounting his “discovery” of Angkor, John Thomson jour-neyed into Cambodia at the start of 1866.2 His companion, the student interpreter H. G. Kennedy, records that they reached “Nakhon Wat” (now Angkor Wat) on February 26 that year.3 Above and beyond their importance as inaugural photographic documents, the images that resulted from this expedition are germane to the present discussion for a number of reasons. Unlike the French team who arrived at Angkor shortly after Thomson, the Scottish photographer would have no direct influ-ence over care or management of the site. Where the far more numerous photographs produced by Emile Gsell may therefore mark the transition to colonial control, Thomson’s images sit more comfortably within a narrative of tourism and travel.4 This goes hand in hand, however, with an explicit desire to see the site preserved for a global (or at least Western) audience. In his accompanying narrative, Thomson writes dismissively of the inability of the inhabitants of Angkor to care for their sur-roundings: “indolence, or superstition, or both, prevent them from stretching forth a hand to protect from the ravages of time those monuments whose existence at no distant period will be marked by heaps of ruins, that, like blots, will only disfigure

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what might have been a splendid page in the history of the human race.”5

While Thomson may not have been able to directly enact any preservation- based initiatives, his images were used to demonstrate the international significance of Angkor. In James Fergusson’s influential History of Architecture, for example, engravings based on Thomson’s photographs illustrate the section on Angkor.6 As Fergusson writes in the preface to his revised version of 1876, “For detecting similarities, or distin-guishing differences between specimens situated at distances from one another, photographs are almost equal to actual personal inspection.”7 Such a sentiment echoes the work of John Ruskin. From his writings we know that Thomson sought to follow the compositional principles laid out by the great art critic, but his work fails to carry through Ruskin’s wider call for photographers of early architecture to avoid the picturesque and document instead “stone by stone, and sculpture by sculpture.”8 Thomson’s images of Angkor are caught between the scientific and the picturesque at a time when technological limitations prohibited a comprehensive documentation of the site, and ideological and aesthetic concerns continued to favor an Orientalist perception. An image of the inner reservoir of Angkor Wat, for example, includes a half- naked individual both as a scale against which the space might be measured and to lend the scene an exoticism it might otherwise lack.9

All of which positions Thomson’s Angkor photographs within a complex dialogue with preservation. While there is clearly a desire to see the monuments transferred to European control and conserved for the future, the aesthetic choices taken do not (perhaps cannot) reflect or enact preservationist aims. Nevertheless, Thomson’s pictures act as powerful early framing devices for how Angkor might be perceived as heritage, or more specifically as part of a nascent world heritage where sites can be compared against and related to other sites geo-graphically distant through photography. Somewhat paradoxi-cally, the content of the images also opposes the high- colonial stance taken by Thomson in his text. The facade of Angkor Wat, for instance, is flanked by wooden structures, evidence of the small but not insignificant community that still resided in and— crucially— cared for this “forgotten” temple.10 As with all such photographs, here the rawness and “uncontainability” of the image is exposed and revised interpretations made pos-sible.11 The ethical implications of such a shift are profound. Thomson’s desire to preserve Angkor has been largely brought to fruition. Sadly, so has his marginalization of the people who live in and around the site. Torn from their original narrative mooring, the meaning making implicit in Thomson’s photo-graphs might be reconceptualized to foreground the people

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of Angkor above or at least alongside their monumental built environment. Can more recent photographic projects be said to have taken this as their main objective from the outset?

The Timeless PeriodIn the aftermath of more than a century of colonial control and postcolonial conflict, we find influential work by a series of travel and fine- art photographers who documented Angkor dur-ing the 1990s, a time when renewed conservation efforts were underway, following the inscription of the site onto the UNESCO World Heritage List.12 To take three prominent examples, Thierry Diwo, John McDermott, and Kenro Izu all encountered Angkor for the first time between 1992 and 1995.13 The images produced by these individuals have continued to shape a visual understand-ing of Angkor through books, postcards, exhibitions, and, more recently, online media. The return of conservators to the site thus went hand- in- hand with the arrival of “high- end” fine art and travel photography. Although temporally far less remote than Thomson’s work, the Angkor documented by such photog-raphers still seems distant from common experience of the site today. For McDermott at least this was the intention: to produce images that “look as if they’d been taken 300 years ago, 500 years ago, or yesterday— or tomorrow.”14 The desire to depict a “timeless” Angkor, and the continued popularity of such pho-tographs, has important ramifications for any ethical engage-ment with the site, not least whether the implied musealization works for or against disenfranchised stakeholders.

This in turn is closely related to the issue of preservation. Photography of the 1990s records a site on the cusp of wide-spread restoration by manifold international organizations. While these images are marginal to the huge volumes of pho-tographic work being produced by archaeologists and conser-vators contemporaneously, it may be argued that they are far more recognizable and, perhaps, influential as framing devices for how a lay public might understand preservation at Angkor.

Of course, such photography records these monuments through a distinctly Western lens, but there are important (if tacit) references to alternative ideological positions. A scene might be photographed in romantic sepia tones yet foreground the work of a local caretaker, for example.15 One feature of the site that Izu in particular has drawn out is the continued sacredness of the temples. Photography here complicates the tension between profane and enchanted heritage that Denis Byrne has discussed. If Thomson’s work might be taken to represent a period during which heritage conservation elevated science and rationality to a “semireligious status,” then can these more recent photographic projects be seen as part of a process of “re- enchantment”?16 Similarities in content and

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composition must be understood as less important here than intention, narrative accompaniment, and use. Of course, we cannot simplistically conflate the Western ideal of the romantic ruin— as seen through the cameras lens— with the religious use of a site. Indeed, Buddhist belief in maintenance and repair as a route to salvation is fundamentally opposed to the ruinous state of most Angkorean temples (hence modern structures— rarely photographed by tourists or professionals— are built alongside the ancient structures [Figure 2]). Yet the focus that photographers such as Izu, McDermott, and Diwo place on the ethereal, intangible, and— in essence— unphotographable qualities of Angkor alerts us to a shift of visual concern. The preservation and documentation of material remains through “rational” technologies thus serve to make possible the emergence of an “irrational” photography that revels in mystery and the unknown. The Angkor of fine- art and travel photography operates in a tense stand- off with preservation. By conserving and opening up new areas of the site, tourist numbers are liable to rise, making scenes devoid of people that resonate with a “timeless” quality increasingly difficult to locate. Yet conservation and restoration are essen-tial if certain structures are to remain accessible and indeed photographable.

Images from this period have come to play a significant role in the visual world of Angkor, framing knowledge of the site from a distance (in printed publications and online) and in closer proximity. McDermott for example runs two galleries in Siem Reap, both selling a selection of his Angkorean images

2. Tourists ignore the more recent temple at Bakong, Angkor. Photograph by author.

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in a variety of formats. Diwo also operates a gallery selling postcards and prints of his photographs, alongside figurines and other material culture created by local artisans. The work of both may be found in the retail outlets of prestigious hotels across Siem Reap, including a permanent sales exhibition of McDermott’s work at the Raffles Grand Hotel D’Angkor. Diwo’s images, meanwhile, are prominently displayed in the official gift shop at Angkor Wat. These collections are not part of the “official” representation of the site as propagated by UNESCO, APSARA,17 and other heritage organizations, but they clearly have an important role to play in the touristic and creative life of Angkor, Siem Reap, and Cambodia more widely.

In the National Museum in Phnom Penh, for example, McDermott’s images provide a backdrop to the permanent exhibition of sculpture from Angkor (Figure 3). His enigmatic photographs here physically encircle any appreciation of the carvings and bas- reliefs, creating a highly romanticized milieu in which the history of Angkor might be told through its objects (which are so often missing from the site itself). In an article in the New York Times McDermott was described as the “Ansel Adams of Angkor” in recognition of the power his images carry in creating a particular view of the site, constructing as much as documenting the scenes depicted.18 It would, however, be misleading to suggest that such pictures contradict or under-mine the visual message official organizations might wish to promote. Their work is well served by a continued interest in Angkor as a site of “great” photography, a majestic place that should be preserved at all costs. The irony, of course, is that

3. John McDermott image in use at The National Museum, Phnom Penh. Photograph by author.

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images predominantly taken before the onset of major conser-vation work should overshadow the millions (if not billions) of photographs that have been taken of the site more recently, since that work has been completed.

What of the ethical side to such imagery? While it would be hard to argue that black- and- white, intensely evocative photographs of the temples of Angkor present a radical and ethically engaged perception of the site, there is a more direct relationship that draws out the importance of photography as a prolonged activity with great significance to Cambodia in gen-eral, rather than the simplistic brief documentation too often practiced. Crucially, all of the photographers discussed here have used their creative work as a route to social change, with great involvement in charitable organizations. Most noticeable is the children’s hospital established by Izu, while galleries run by McDermott provide space for the annual Angkor Photo Fes-tival, which I shall return to later. The significance of photogra-phy working alongside philanthropy in a country like Cambodia cannot be overstated. That much of this takes place outside the remit or influence of core heritage agencies is noteworthy.

Whose Place?One recent endeavor that might help redress this is the Our Place World Heritage project. Established in 2006 by New Zealand–based photographer Geoff Steven, Our Place sets out to create the world’s “first official World Heritage photographic databank.”19 The sites are documented in consistent fash-ion, with cameras provided by Panasonic (a major sponsor of UNESCO) to a small team of professional photographers work-ing within a tight brief. The core motivation behind the project is the belief that making people aware of World Heritage— via photography— will encourage them to care for and preserve that heritage.20 This fairly anodyne suggestion goes hand in hand with a more radical understanding of each site, one that focuses on lived human experience over the built or tangible features commonly associated with the World Heritage label. As Steven writes, “Photographs that capture local people relat-ing to their special place can evoke an emotional response from a viewing public far removed from the actual location and can reinforce to the viewer the relevance of that place to its local guardians and inhabitants. The viewer can actually begin to identify with the subject matter— the location can become ‘our’ place, as well as ‘their’ place.”21

The Our Place project thus hinges on a tense double con-cern. From one perspective the sites must be— to use a cliché the project itself does little to avoid— awe inspiring, able to elicit in a few images a “universal” desire to protect and, per-haps, experience for oneself. On the other hand, an empathetic

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identification with the people living in and around each site is to be provoked; a level of interest that, in a sense, foregrounds the personal and the individual over any universal meaning.

Angkor was one of the first sites documented for the proj-ect, and in the resulting pictures we begin to see this tension manifest. Familiar images are clearly present: Angkor Wat from across the moat, the benignly smiling faces at Angkor Thom South Gate, a tree engulfing a temple. These sit easily along-side images of “local inhabitants”— predominantly monks and caretakers. One troubling shot, however, shows one of the many children who can be found begging across the site to make small amounts of money from tourists eager to take their picture in precisely the way seen here. Such images demon-strate that merely documenting the human presence at a site— whilst a welcome shift from the material focus of mainstream preservationist photography in some regards— cannot be seen as an unproblematic route to a more “ethical” photography. Indeed, it may be argued that the poverty experienced by many of the individuals who live and work among Angkor is exacer-bated by the eagerness with which people wish to photograph their circumstances. Many children are sent to the site, rather than to school, by their parents specifically to make money in this way. In capturing photographs that purport to show an “authentic” side of Cambodian life, visitors may inadvertently become entangled in the oppressive circumstances that per-petuate poverty.

While the Our Place project is far from alone in document-ing this aspect of Angkor, it is of concern that such imagery should uncritically enter the official “photographic databank” of UNESCO. Photography and preservation must be aligned, if not in terms of content then in the ambition to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life for precisely those people Our Place asks us to empathize with. A more engaged photography is needed to this end, one that does not simply document heri-tage as a preserved and timeless “thing” but seeks to change what that heritage might mean and how it can better the lives of human beings today. This means going beyond a simplistic and clichéd call for photographs to “open our eyes” to diversity and understanding. Critical thought is required above all else. As Susan Sontag wrote in her return to the subject of photog-raphy, “So far as we feel sympathy, we feel we are not accom-plices to what causes the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence.”22

The past decade has seen a shift in the general approach to Angkor that reflects the position I advocate here, but this has not provoked any significant change in the sites “official” pho-tographic life. When Angkor was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992, the foremost concerns lay in the conser-

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vation and restoration of its monumental built heritage.23 To a certain extent this work sought to resume the efforts of the École Française d’Extrème Orient (EFEO), which had overseen research at Angkor between 1909 and 1972. The two- decade gap in the protection and management of the site brought about by near- perpetual conflict had resulted in widespread looting and destruction. This exacerbated the impact of un-checked nature on the monuments, and when research teams were able to access the site for the first time in twenty years, the emergency reconstruction of temples took precedence over any less “tangible” concerns. It should be noted however that this was not merely the recommencement of a colonial set of architectural or archaeological interests. As Keiko Miura writes, “Save Angkor” became a symbol of peace, reconciliation, and national prestige.24 When the site was finally removed from the World Heritage in Danger List in 2004, UNESCO made it one of their major restoration “success stories.”25

Toward the end of this period a revised agenda was put forth, one that would focus on societal development over (or at least in conjunction with) preservation activities. The “Angkor Development Decade,” as it came to be known, gathered around three main strands: combating poverty, achieving sta-ble economic growth, and enhancing the quality of life.26 These laudable aims are no doubt more difficult to document photo-graphically than the obvious before- and- after shots of physical preservation, yet I feel it is highly telling that images included on the official online listing page of UNESCO continue to focus on architecture and carvings over these less material concerns.

4. Tourist and local child. Banteay Srei, Angkor. Photograph by author.

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Perhaps this is to be expected, given the listing criteria used to define a World Heritage Site, but there is a case to be made for photography to be used in a more provocative and imaginative fashion within the official heritage arena. This might address precisely the ethical dimensions of heritage preservation I have discussed here. The profusion of new technologies and new creative contexts for capturing and disseminating photographs greatly expands the potential for realizing such goals.

Conclusion: An Alternative Model?In all but name, the Angkor Photo Festival has little connection to the World Heritage Site. Now in its ninth year, the festival takes place in Siem Reap, with galleries, outdoor exhibitions, youth workshops, and— most notably— evening slideshow pro-jections that bring photographic projects from around the world to this tourist town. The work featured is primarily journalistic or contemporary- art focused, rather than the travel imagery usu-ally associated with the region. This includes pictures created during the youth workshops, which see leading international photographers provide technical and aesthetic guidance to participants who are invited to produce a series of images on any subject over the course of a week. In 2012, at least two such participants chose to document life in and around the temples of Angkor, not the touristic performance of “authentic” life regularly seen and photographed but the quiet moments away from the main temples, or at those times of day when most outside visitors have returned to their hotels. These compel-ling and understated visions are unlikely to replace the trees

5. Sunrise at Angkor Wat. Photograph by author.

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of Ta Prohm or the faces of the Bayon as the defining visual images of Angkor, but they are critical (in both senses of the word) introductions to the wider social landscape of the site. The link to preservation, here, is admittedly tangential, but the direction of this article has precisely been toward those outlying photographic projects that shape and frame wider understanding of Angkorean heritage. These have had var-ied intentions and influence, but they may be usefully drawn together in working through the critical relevance of photogra-phy to preservation away from mainstream conservation and archaeological practice.

While the workshops, exhibitions, and competitions under taken throughout the Angkor Photo Festival do demon-strate a considered approach toward photojournalism and fine- art photography from the perspective of the final image, the prominence given to photography as an activity that may be able to bring disparate groups together and— perhaps— empower the disenfranchised represents a provocative oppor-tunity for heritage. This is taken even further with the ongoing work of Anjali House, a nonprofit organization that supports street children in Siem Reap through education, healthcare, and the arts. In the latter category photo- workshops play a vital role, with the results available as high- quality postcards and brought together in the 2010 publication Cambodia: Our Vision.27 The charity therefore builds on the tourist economy of Angkor as a major heritage destination and the popular-ity of photography to directly assist underprivileged children financially. At the same time, the workshops serve to build

6. Sunrise at Angkor Wat: looking the other way. Photograph by author.

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confidence and provide a creative outlet. While the subject matter may be far removed from the built heritage of Angkor, this model is, I think, one with great relevance to preserva-tion initiatives more generally as the ethical and moral conse-quences of such work are called into question.

Since Thomson first turned his camera on the facade of Angkor Wat, the dominant conceptualization of photography has been that of the record (of the state of the structures or the documentation of a tourist encounter). To allow conceptual and practical space for photography as a collective and critical activity may help reconfigure the significance and social value of this and other “World” heritage sites.

BiographyColin Sterling is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Archaeology, University Col-lege London, and an associate researcher for heritage consultancy Barker Langham.

Notes1 Elizabeth Edwards, The Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Histori-cal Imagination, 1885–1918 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press), 27.2 Henri Mouhot, Henri Mouhot’s Diary: Travels in the Central Parts of Siam, Cambo-dia, and Laos during the years 1858–61. Abridged and edited with an introduction by C. Pym. (1864; rpt., London: Oxford University Press, 1966); John Thomson, The Antiquities of Cambodia: A Series of Photographs Taken on the Spot with Letterpress Description (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1867), 7.3 H. G. Kennedy, “Report of an Expedition Made into Southern Laos and Cambodia in the Early Part of the Year 1866,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London (1867): 306.4 Joachim Bautze, “Émile Gsell (1838–79) and Early Photographs of Angkor,” in Connecting Empires and States: Selected Papers from the 13th International Confer-ence of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, vol. 2, ed. Mai Lin Tjoa- Bonatz, Andreas Reinicke, and Dominik Bonatz, 306–16 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012).5 Thomson, Antiquities of Cambodia, 15.6 James Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture: Forming the Third Volume of the New Edition of the “History of Architecture” (London: John Murray, 1876)7 Ibid., v.8 John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture (New York: John Wiley and Son, 1855), preface.9 See Wellcome Library Image Collection, L0055807, http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary .org/record=b1177052.10 See Wellcome Library Image Collection, L0055701, http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary .org/record=b1177064.11 Elizabeth Edwards, Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology, and Museums (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2001), 22.12 Keiko Miura, “World Heritage Making in Angkor: Global, Regional, National, and Local Actors, Interplays, and Implications,” in World Heritage Angkor and Beyond, ed. Brigitta Hauser- Schaublin, 10–31 (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2011).13 John McDermott, Elegy: Reflections on Angkor (Siem Reap: McDermott Gallery, 2009); Kenro Izu, Passage to Angkor (New York: Friends without a Border, 2006). See Thierry Diwo publications at http://www.tdiwo.com/html/publishing.php?p _lang=en.14 Matt Gross, “Capturing Angkor before Tourism Works Its Changes,” New York Times, June 10, 2007.15 See http://www.tdiwo.com/html/poster.php16 Denis Byrne, “Chartering Heritage in Asia’s Postmodern World,” News in Conser-vation 19, no. 2 (2004): 17.17 Authority for Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap.18 Gross, “Capturing Angkor before Tourism Works Its Changes.”19 See http://ourplaceworldheritage.com/.20 Geoff Steven, “Our Place and Our Heritage: A Global Opportunity for Positive Change,” http://ourplaceworldheritage.com/custom.cfm?&action=contacts.

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21 Ibid.22 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2003), 91.23 See http://whc.unesco.org/archive/1992/whc- 92- conf002- 12e.pdf24 Miura, “World Heritage Making in Angkor,” 15.25 See http://whc.unesco.org/en/107/.26 Anne Lemiastre and Sebastien Cavalier, “Analysis and Management Prospects of the International Angkor Programme,” Museum 54, nos. 1&2 (2002): 117–25.27 Cambodia: Our Vision (Phnom Penh: 3D Graphics, 2010).