S-21, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
My sister writes from Cambodia, moved by a visit to S21. I felt the same in 2002, and tried to put it into words:
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Museum at S-21
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Probably ordinary rigor mortis of the face, but one imagines their exuberance at meeting long-withheld death. The postmortem photographs are smile after smile.
Several kilometers away, at the “Killing Fields” of Choeung Ek, a memorial is made from some of the human remains exhumed there: jawless skulls on shelves stacked two or so stories high.
But I was most moved by the faces of the living.
The Khmer Rouge officers at “Security Office 21” took mug shots of their prisoners before chaining them to the floor and subjecting them to months of torture. These images now line the walls of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, made from the very rooms of the former prison. One sees the cells, the shackles, the small metal boxes for collecting excrement. There is a room with several paintings illustrating the methods of torture, and a glass case displaying the instruments used. Other rooms evidence the result: on the wall an enlarged photograph of flesh limp on a metal bed frame, the body beaten to obscurity; in the center of the room, that same metal frame. Otherwise the room is spare, as if an invisible horror filled it, leaving little room for much else.
With my camera I sought to make my own record of the story I heard in the still, silent objects. But coming upon the faces, the square black-and-white shots, mostly frontal, sometimes side, I put away my camera out of deference. A shutter click had marked for them the beginning of a brutal end. It may have been a small moment, but I could not bring myself to repeat it.
“Before the prisoners were placed in the cells they were photographed, and detailed biographies of their childhood up to the dates of their arrests were recorded,” my museum hand-out reads.
Here am I, this was my life, every prisoner had to say, after which their clothes and humanity would be stripped from them. Among the faces in the pictures, some wear a look of helplessness or bewilderment, but many speak anger, indignation, even defiance. The boy with the taunting half-smile—I can only imagine what trouble he provoked.
“The victims in the prison were taken from all parts of the country and from all walks of life,” the museum handout reads, and lists as evidence ten kinds of occupation, and ten nationalities other than Cambodian. But no amount of description duplicates the effect of seeing the pictures of the individuals, their photos aligned in rows, or enlarged to life-size or greater proportion, or arranged contiguously to fill up a rectangular frame. Surrounded, you may feel the urge to look each portrait in the eyes, to listen to what each expression has to say. I gave up when I came to the third room of pictures. More than ten thousand individuals were detained at this particular prison.
The heartless documentation of the Khmer Rouge—imagine!: number around the neck, blunt spike against the back of the head to hold it in place, a white light flash; imagine in that instant soul becoming specimen, soon to be animal for slaughter—this cruel catalogue has created a memorial in itself, far from anything the madman’s regime intended, and strangely complementary to the museum’s main intent.
We memorialize genocide as a prevention, a warning to ourselves that we can become monsters, even to a degree that defies our un-monstrous imaginations. On the other hand, when we see the multitude of our faces, we remember that we are ourselves. Our physical selves that bear our spirit, our expressions that demand dignity and justice—earthly and tangible, that is our grandeur.
Horrific history tells us that respect for life cannot be taken for granted: we have forgotten it before, we must renew it every moment. The faces, each one meaning a life, renewed in me that respect, to a depth I only rarely experience.
Strange and obvious lesson to take away from a holocaust museum. Interestingly, Tuol Sleng’s sunny campus once housed a high school and primary school before it became a site for the eradication of civilized thought, Pol Pot’s return to year zero. Now I feel I leave the place wiser than when I entered it, and grateful that the grounds have been restored to their original function.
Unexpected place for humanity’s face.
A Burmese American photographer taking identically composed pictures of individuals living under Myanmar’s repressive regime.
A conceptual artist collecting thumbprints for the work, “247 Anonymous Portraits.”
The innocence and ignorance of high school yearbooks.
Your driver’s license. A collage of all the driver’s licenses in the state.
Police line-ups.
You will go to a holocaust museum and come out thinking never, never again, never, never again. But what is the depth of that? Murder is a human constant; what war does not kill innocents and multiply suffering? We bow our heads to holocausts but we go on. Like the Khmer Rouge, warring sides in Rwanda made children into vicious soldiers.
So I contend we cannot pretend to
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I found this in my files and apparently above's as far as I got. But this blogger is called "orts," so it's appropriate.
- - - - - -
Museum at S-21
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Probably ordinary rigor mortis of the face, but one imagines their exuberance at meeting long-withheld death. The postmortem photographs are smile after smile.
Several kilometers away, at the “Killing Fields” of Choeung Ek, a memorial is made from some of the human remains exhumed there: jawless skulls on shelves stacked two or so stories high.
But I was most moved by the faces of the living.
The Khmer Rouge officers at “Security Office 21” took mug shots of their prisoners before chaining them to the floor and subjecting them to months of torture. These images now line the walls of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, made from the very rooms of the former prison. One sees the cells, the shackles, the small metal boxes for collecting excrement. There is a room with several paintings illustrating the methods of torture, and a glass case displaying the instruments used. Other rooms evidence the result: on the wall an enlarged photograph of flesh limp on a metal bed frame, the body beaten to obscurity; in the center of the room, that same metal frame. Otherwise the room is spare, as if an invisible horror filled it, leaving little room for much else.
With my camera I sought to make my own record of the story I heard in the still, silent objects. But coming upon the faces, the square black-and-white shots, mostly frontal, sometimes side, I put away my camera out of deference. A shutter click had marked for them the beginning of a brutal end. It may have been a small moment, but I could not bring myself to repeat it.
“Before the prisoners were placed in the cells they were photographed, and detailed biographies of their childhood up to the dates of their arrests were recorded,” my museum hand-out reads.
Here am I, this was my life, every prisoner had to say, after which their clothes and humanity would be stripped from them. Among the faces in the pictures, some wear a look of helplessness or bewilderment, but many speak anger, indignation, even defiance. The boy with the taunting half-smile—I can only imagine what trouble he provoked.
“The victims in the prison were taken from all parts of the country and from all walks of life,” the museum handout reads, and lists as evidence ten kinds of occupation, and ten nationalities other than Cambodian. But no amount of description duplicates the effect of seeing the pictures of the individuals, their photos aligned in rows, or enlarged to life-size or greater proportion, or arranged contiguously to fill up a rectangular frame. Surrounded, you may feel the urge to look each portrait in the eyes, to listen to what each expression has to say. I gave up when I came to the third room of pictures. More than ten thousand individuals were detained at this particular prison.
The heartless documentation of the Khmer Rouge—imagine!: number around the neck, blunt spike against the back of the head to hold it in place, a white light flash; imagine in that instant soul becoming specimen, soon to be animal for slaughter—this cruel catalogue has created a memorial in itself, far from anything the madman’s regime intended, and strangely complementary to the museum’s main intent.
We memorialize genocide as a prevention, a warning to ourselves that we can become monsters, even to a degree that defies our un-monstrous imaginations. On the other hand, when we see the multitude of our faces, we remember that we are ourselves. Our physical selves that bear our spirit, our expressions that demand dignity and justice—earthly and tangible, that is our grandeur.
Horrific history tells us that respect for life cannot be taken for granted: we have forgotten it before, we must renew it every moment. The faces, each one meaning a life, renewed in me that respect, to a depth I only rarely experience.
Strange and obvious lesson to take away from a holocaust museum. Interestingly, Tuol Sleng’s sunny campus once housed a high school and primary school before it became a site for the eradication of civilized thought, Pol Pot’s return to year zero. Now I feel I leave the place wiser than when I entered it, and grateful that the grounds have been restored to their original function.
Unexpected place for humanity’s face.
A Burmese American photographer taking identically composed pictures of individuals living under Myanmar’s repressive regime.
A conceptual artist collecting thumbprints for the work, “247 Anonymous Portraits.”
The innocence and ignorance of high school yearbooks.
Your driver’s license. A collage of all the driver’s licenses in the state.
Police line-ups.
You will go to a holocaust museum and come out thinking never, never again, never, never again. But what is the depth of that? Murder is a human constant; what war does not kill innocents and multiply suffering? We bow our heads to holocausts but we go on. Like the Khmer Rouge, warring sides in Rwanda made children into vicious soldiers.
So I contend we cannot pretend to
- - - -
I found this in my files and apparently above's as far as I got. But this blogger is called "orts," so it's appropriate.
posted by fragments of angry candy at 4:55 PM
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