Faces of Cambodia
Cambodia is most famous for the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat. This is, in fact, the main reason most people visit the country. However, I was most interested in finding the culture and people who live amongst this ancient backdrop.
Most of all, I was looking forward to the photography. I had booked several photo tours with Angkor Travel Photography before I even landed, and they turned out to be the best part of my trip. From an early morning water lily harvest and a floating village on Tonlé Sap lake, to a street photography tour at a locals-only market and two different temples, there were endless opportunities to connect with the people who live in and around Siem Reap.
Across Southeast Asia, I’ve found people to be warm and willing in front of a camera. Cambodia was no different. Children came running, giggling to each other; smiles came quickly and strangers waved. The reason why this may be more unexpected here compared to other SE Asian countries is because Cambodia carries such harrowing recent history. Most visitors don’t fully confront this aspect of the country’s legacy of genocide, and I only did so at the very end of my time, when I was in Phnom Penh (see the final “face” on this page).
Despite this profoundly heavy history, the Cambodian people I met were some of the warmest I’ve encountered anywhere. To me, it’s a demonstration of humanity’s resilience to move forward in spite of a country’s shared trauma.
A few things you’ll notice in these portraits:
The Demographic Gap
When going around the country, there is a noticeable a lack of very elderly people. This is a sobering reality of the 1970s genocide, which resulted in almost a quarter of the Cambodian popular being killed or lost to starvation or disease. Those who remain are the precious keepers of Cambodia’s traditional knowledge.
The Krama
The krama is a traditional Cambodian cotton scarf, almost always in a checkered pattern. I saw it wrapped a dozen different ways on women – from a headwrap and a scarf to a makeshift bag or even a baby hammock.
Shaved Heads
Among elderly Buddhist women, a shaved head and white clothing is a mark of deep religious devotion. These women, known as Don Chi, have chosen to live a life of service and prayer within their local temple’s community.
Monks & The Lotus
Buddhism does not just live in the background here; it is the heartbeat of the country. Monks are a daily presence at temples, markets, and in the smallest villages. The lotus flower, which emerges clean and beautiful out of muddy water, remains one of Buddhism’s most enduring symbols of purity and enlightenment.
I was introduced to this woman simply as Yeay, a title of respect for an older woman, which translates to “grandmother.” At 87, she was the matriarch of a stilt home we visited in rural Siem Reap. While members of her family milled about, she sat perfectly still on a large wooden platform (called a krae) in the center of the ground floor. Behind her, the realities of modern village life were on full display: scooter helmets on a table, motorbikes parked nearby, and a bright red plastic chair.
She was tucked into herself tightly, a tiny, gaunt figure wrapped in a vibrant purple floral shirt and gold-patterned pants. There was a quiet, stoicism about her; her weathered hands rested on her knee while her eyes looked off into the distance. She was a natural at posing, clearly used to the photographers who regularly visit her home to take her portrait.
But the real magic happened when I put my camera down. She started readjusting her krama, so I turned my phone to her in selfie-mode, so she could use it as a mirror. She leaned in close, pointing at her image and pointed towards it, mumbling something I didn’t understand. She tapped her blue-checkered head scarf and when she opened her mouth, I could see the few teeth that remained.
Inside the gates of a quiet pagoda in Siem Reap, I found this monk sitting on the steps of the temple’s living quarters. This was a space for the monks who live there and, as it turned out, a sanctuary for a dozen or so stray cats. It is common to find cats living at Buddhist monasteries; they are well-cared for, as Buddhists believe in the sanctity of all living things and the cycle of rebirth.
This monk picked up a tiny tabby that happened to wander by, his hands gently trying to keep the little one from squirming away. Behind him, the symbols of his world were perfectly framed: the vibrant red and blue of the Cambodian flag, a stone Naga statue guarding the entrance, and a clock ticking away the afternoon.
What the photo doesn’t show is the personality of the man behind the robes. Later on, we found him in a different spot, leaning on a balcony and smoking a cigarette. He was careful, though; he wouldn’t smoke while we were shooting, a quiet nod to the respect he held for his position and the image of his order.
Just fifteen minutes outside of Siem Reap, it felt like a completely different world. We met Tea and her husband just before sunrise to accompany her on her morning water lily gathering. We watched as she navigated her canoe among the endless watery field of green and pink.
She was dressed in a busy, floral-patterned shirt and a krama scarf, which she eventually tied around her hat for an extra layer of protection from the rising sun. She paddled her shallow green boat with effortless grace, plucking each pink lily flower out from the lake. She then cleaned the long stems (a process that involved rhythmically smacking them against the water) before piling them high in her boat.
After harvesting for over an hour, we headed back to her humble house where she began preparing the haul which would be sold at that morning’s market. Each part of the plant had a purpose: the petals for temple offerings and the crunchy stems for soup broth. Tea, a 26-year-old mother, was incredibly generous, even handing me a vibrant pink bouquet to take with me as we left.
Deep inside a local market in Siem Reap, far from the souvenir stalls and tourist crowds, my photo tour guide, Remi pointed toward a gap between walls made of hanging fabric. There, almost completely hidden in a fort made of silk and satin, sat this tailor.
He was in the middle of sewing, a pool of shiny blue fabric pooling onto his lap. He stopped as he saw us and offered a calm, steady gaze for our lenses. The scene was an interesting study in global contradictions. Surrounded by high-end silks and ornate tassels, he was wearing a bright yellow “Upper Arlington” t-shirt. Being from the DC area, seeing “Arlington” printed on a shirt in this dim, hidden stall on the other side of the world felt like a surreal slice of home in the most unexpected place (even though it’s actually a reference to a city in Ohio).
Just a few stalls away from the tailor, we found another craftsman in a section filled with silver shops, similar to the ones in the jewelry department of a US department store. But at all of the Macy’s of the world I’ve been in, I’ve never seen someone actually making the jewelry on the spot.
This man sat hunched over a well-used worktable, focused intently on the blue flame and his tweezers. He didn’t look up as we approached; he was locked into his work with the blowtorch, oblivious to anything but the silver in front of him. In a section filled with expensive jewelry held behind glass, his steadiness was a striking contrast to the surrounding hustle and bustle of the market. Here, we found a quiet, fiery pocket of precision in the middle of the chaos.
Just across the main street of a bustling night market, a wide grassy strip acted as a makeshift picnic spot for local families eating their dinner on a random weekday evening in August. They spread out mats, shared street food, and enjoyed the cooler night air.
As we were walking along, this family of four was just packing up to head home. In a scene that I saw countless times in Siem Reap, they all piled onto a single motorbike. When they saw our cameras, the little boy perched at the front went through an adorable, shy transformation. He started with a curious look, moved to a polite Sampeah (the traditional Cambodian greeting, which looks like prayer hands), and finally dissolved into giggles, covering his eyes with his hands while still grinning ear-to-ear.
While the sight of a family of four on one, single scooter might look like a logistical feat to a Westerner, for them, it’s just the end of a typical Tuesday night dinner.
In a village perched on the edge of Tonlé Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, I met this woman resting in the shade of a stilt house. Her head was shaved in a gesture of Buddhist devotion and with a colorful, checkered krama draped over her shoulders, she looked as peaceful as her attire suggested.
She sat quietly, gripping a simple wooden staff, sitting beside another woman of similar age. Their faces were etched with the lines of a life lived through Cambodia’s most turbulent decades. They were sitting there in absolute stillness, watching children run around in water that was about knee-high. In a few months’ time, these very streets would be completely covered by water.
She didn’t need to speak to command respect; her presence alone told a story of survival, faith, and the quiet dignity of age.
We first saw this monk in the early morning light, quietly sweeping the stone entryway outside another Siem Reap temple. When he finished his chores and disappeared inside, we took our shoes off and followed, stepping out of the sun and into the darkness of an otherwise empty interior.
He was alone, lighting some candles. We started to walk closer to him to get a good shot, stepping onto a large mat on the floor. But he stopped us with a gesture that was understood even though we didn’t speak the same language. Instead, we stood on the edges of the mat and he turned his attention back to the altar.
After he was finished lighting the candles, he turned and stared directly into my camera. The flicker of the flames caught the vibrant orange of his robe and illuminated his Sak Yant tattoos on his right shoulder. These, common on Buddhist monks, are hand-poked with ancient scripts and spiritual blessings for protection.
In the outdoor space of a family’s home outside of Siem Reap, I watched the most physically demanding cooking process I’ve ever seen. This woman was making rice noodles (called Nom Banh Chok) by hand, which she and her family then sold to local restaurants. I watched her complete the process from start to finish.
After she mixed ground-down rice into a flour, kneaded it like she would for bread, and used her entire body weight to press the dough through an old-school wooden lever, she finally sat to carefully gather and separate the fresh strands. She moved with the steady strength of someone who does this work continuously each day, her focus never wavering.
In a world of instant, ultra-processed food, seeing the sheer physical force and manual dexterity required to create a single nest of noodles was a powerful reminder of the craftsmanship behind one of Cambodia’s staples. It was a family business, seemingly run entirely by women: from the heavy lifting at the press to the delicate sorting of the silk-like strands.
Among the smiles and gentle spirit of the Cambodian people, there are faces that carry the weight of the country’s darkest chapter. This man, Sum Rithy, is one of them. I met him outside the now-memorial ground of the “Killing Fields.” As a survivor of the four years which decimated the Cambodian population, he is a living testament to a generation that was nearly extinguished. My tour guide that day informed us that the only reason he survived was because he was a mechanic who fixed motorbikes; thus, he was more valuable to be kept alive.
He sat with a quiet, somber dignity, surrounded by copies of his own story: a book he wrote to ensure that the atrocities he witnessed were never forgotten and would never be repeated. His eyes held an understandable sadness; they’ve seen things that are impossible to fathom. Meeting him was a jarring but necessary reminder that the beautiful, resilient Cambodia we see today was built on the ashes of a genocide that occurred just decades ago.
In a project about “Faces,” his is perhaps the most important. It represents the “why” behind the resilience of every other person I photographed.
Cambodia is a place that stays with you long after you leave.