There is a debate, or maybe an argument, about whether one tells the stories and shows the faces of victims. Especially the children.

In the States it would be inappropriate, and in some cases illegal, to do so. However pictures from developing countries are often used in NGO promotional media, on websites, in large advertisements showing some poor starving kid in a Displaced Persons camp. Journalists–myself included–come in wanting to make images, to tell the stories, to “build awareness.” Those pictures travel the globe and personal pain becomes very, very public. (AFESIP Kampong Cham center director Keng Sochenda oversees mostly girls in their early teens, although some are younger. The center is deep in the countryside, hopefully far enough to avoid any retribution.)

Consider the eight months of contract negotiation I had in Seattle with Harborview Medical Center’s Community Relations Department to gain six hours of watched-over access to the emergency department. No pictures of patients that were identifying. Preferably no pictures of patients, because of HIPPA and the fear that family, or the patient, might sue the hospital for a violating right to privacy. Consider, also, they had to approve all the media I created. (In an emergency department in Arizona my negotiation was a matter of a couple of phone calls; their media department was much more accommodating).

Here in Cambodia the core question I hear, when addressing this developing-world standard about right to privacy is: “If this were your daughter who had been sexually exploited, would you want her image all over the news?” (at right: AFESIP girls return from the nearby school where they attend classes like any other student. Their afternoons are spent learning vocational skills like weaving or sewing, followed by chores and studying. This is an image about opportunity.)

It’s a good point, as media exposure can be re-traumatizing for victims. Later, especially for children, there may be regret for sharing their story. Or, for those who’ve been sexually exploited, having media around is simply another form of exploitation and may “trigger” a traumatic response, undoing what little counseling victims receive here–trauma therapy is a rare thing here. So, why put them through potentially more trauma? To tell an already over-told story that will make headlines only for a moment?

My job is to find the photographic moment in that story; couple that with the pressure of editors who want something strong. There is so much incredibly well done work out there already that if this story, and my work, are going to make it into the news cycle I have to make it unquestionably strong. Which means pictures of what is actually happening, not interpretations of it.

I’ve been asking many of the NGO people their opinion on this; one response, when asked if it were their daughter, was (to paraphrase): “If at 11 my daughter went public with a story of sexual exploitation and at 19 she regretted it, at least it would have been her decision.” (at left: Closer to Phnom Penh, a young resident of AFESIP Tom Dy, with her children. Stop Exploitation Now funded the child care center which makes her residency and vocational training possible; without the child care she would be unable to spend the time learning.)

This is an answer with broader meaning; in a meeting today with the Asia Foundation Counter Trafficking in Persons group, the theme came down to this: the *entire* country is paralyzed by the trauma of 30 years of genocide and civil war. It is catatonic, existing with the mentality that “life is hard, pain and suffering inevitable, so get used to it.” It is a mental space which perpetuates victimization and a loss of control.

The international community, over the last decade, has attempted to rectify the problem, with respect to trafficking, in various ways but according to a recent Asia Foundation report the community of ad-hoc NGO’s has largely failed. The “new” approach they advocate is to essentially hit the reset button. Start over, and start by supporting the Cambodian government and the Cambodian people because it is they who will change their lives and their futures, not us, not the NGO’s. Corruption is undeniably rampant, but Cambodia, as the victim, must learn to see it has a voice, that it has a choice. (at left: In the countryside of Kampong Cham. The heat was tolerable, but I could see how in July the intensity and quality of light could be described as “white hot.”)

So will my images be exploitive? I think you can argue yes and I think you can argue no. I believe to some degree all media is exploitive and that consent is the greatest issue. For me, building my portfolio with this work is the least of my concerns. Yes, strong work means greater visibility in international media, but strong work also means the story I am documenting is being told. That story is about how a victim is learning to choose and to speak for itself; human trafficking for sex, labor, or arranged marriage is not OK and it is the Cambodian people who must believe they can act on this.

Will I respect the individual’s or the NGO’s decision about photography? Absolutely. I have already proven I can work within these constraints. Do I look at a victim and confirm with him or her that photography is ok? Certainly. I haven’t spent six years working in the field of sexual violence to ignore the importance of choice and control. Will there be instances when this won’t be possible? Yes, and I will do my best at those times–with my first-world, western sensibilities–to determine what will and won’t be safe for the individual. It is still me making a decision for them–which can be seen as victimizing–but short of not doing this work it is the best (in this moment) I have to offer. (at right: A child resident of AFESIP Kampong Cham. I do not know this child’s story, I was simply asked to make some portraits of the residents. One thing I do know, is that every story of trauma is unique, but often the effects are quite similar.)

I think editors would cringe to read this; they are likely to say I need to be more hard-nosed. But this is how I feel about working with victims and survivors, based on many interactions and a growing understanding. This entry is more for the NGO’s who might read this blog when vetting me for work with them–I have found I preface nearly every conversation with this kind of background about myself and my methods. And some, I know, will never offer access. Most of them are US-based.

This entry is also for my readers who follow in a non-professional capacity. This is ethically delicate work. At one facility I was making portraits only to be told one of the children had HIV. “From the child’s mother?” I asked. “No, she was raped by her uncle.” Another was a “ward of the state” for her mother was in prison for selling the child’s sister.

How do you show that? Do you show that? We are a visual race with an ever-decreasing attention span; I hope to capture a moment so I can pull you in deeper, to see what part you play in human trafficking. We all have a role, even in our ignorance, for human trafficking is that complex. (at right: AFESIP Kampong Cham facility)

AFESIP: Acting for Women in Distressing Situations www.afesip.org / www.somaly.org

AFESIP provides A-Z services, from investigation to repatriation, with the victim shelter, retraining and education in between. It is one of the ‘bigger’ more powerful organization. Because of the investigation component, it puts itself at risk for retribution; a few years ago 80 girls were taken at gunpoint from an AFESIP facility after a brothel raid. Somaly Mam, the founder, has also suffered personal retribution from traffickers. Last year when I interviewed her she sighed “so tired, so tired” because she sees all the NGO’s tripping over each other–she understands there needs to be a unified plan.

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A counselor friend once told me you can only go as far with someone as you’ve been yourself. Cognitively, this makes sense, but how does this feel?

I struggle with how to communicate what trauma does to the mind. I do not have my own story, but I’m beginning to grasp what if feels like to have something buried deep within so dominating it is all one can do to suppress it; to let it out could be catastrophic. This piece produced by Mediastorm for the LA Times tells a very heartfelt story of how crippling Post Traumatic Stress can be for an Iraq war veteran. I think you will remember his iconic photograph.

My only real criticism of the media is that while it raises awareness and empathy through the narrative, it doesn’t do much for “processing,” that all important part of addressing how this makes you, the viewer, feel. Mr. Sinco’s epilogue, along with Mr. Miller’s introspect, provide something of a “process” but nothing quite like a post-viewing discussion can do. What does this evoke for you? What do you want to do with that? Although, I know, this is a one-way relationship viewed on screen.

FEAR Project media is similarly plagued; it is content which can be very one-way. However, as the non profit has developed its “services” we have found a greater need for “processing” and facilitated discussion for we are trying to get people to change their behavior. Like this idea: If a woman goes to a party, flirts, drinks, gets drunk, and has unwanted sex, was she raped? Was it partly her fault? The answers are yes, she was raped, and no, it is not her fault. But you would be surprised at the answers I’ve heard.

Without repeating the full mission, what we are trying to do is get people talking about sexual violence. But we walk a fine line; are we impact-full enough, or too much so? People have traumatic responses to our work. At a recent meeting we had a room full of experts–literally–talking about trauma. But we never took the time to talk about how, that day, the discussion and our new media affected us. It is ironic and concerning for I question how we will manage this when we are working with the public, especially with our expanding pool of speakers.

This LA Times media clip is well-timed for Veterans Day; Mr. Miller’s portrait is iconic, we are still at war, and it makes a nice “package.” But at its core, this is a story about trauma. Below are some quotes from Mr. Miller and Mr. Sinco which I found particularly pertinent and remind me how similarly rape and war can affect people. The stories are unique, but they both traumatize.

Link to the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/marlboromarine/

Mr. Miller:
“Any day above ground is a good day. There is no promise of tomorrow.

“Most people want to help a returning vet by celebrating them coming home. The question that needs to be asked instead of ‘Hey can I throw you a party, can I buy you a beer?’ The question that needs to be asked is ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling? Is there anything I can do to help?’

“After Fallouja, I didn’t know how to react and I more or less just put it in the back of my mind and acted like it never happened. Even right now my eyes are starting to hurt just talking about this.

“There was so much counseling that had to be done for myself that I really couldn’t deal with mine and Jessica’s problems on top of it. I didn’t feel that Jessica deserved to go through that with me. I felt that it was something that I brought on myself and that was my weight to carry, not hers. And before I put her through that, I’d rather be without her.

“To look back at it now I just think about holding a rifle and firing at another human being. It’s gut wrenching as well as brain wrecking. How do you justify, regardless of what your causes are or their causes are. How I feel about the war today can be summed up in one question. The same question that can be asked about Vietnam. What have we gained as a country? What have we actually accomplished except for the loss of some damn fine people? People willing to give their life for the country that we have, for this nation, for the freedom that we have.”

Photographer Luis Sinco reflected in the epilogue:
“I saw that look in Blake’s face and I know that is the same look I had on my face.

“I think, simply, the difference between me and Blake is I never had to kill another human being. I believe that is what he is fighting with.

“He’s done some horrible things and he has to come to terms with that. So I hold out hope for him and try to be there for him whenever I can, but he has to take some steps. He has to take some steps and make up his own mind that he wants to live more than the life he is living at the moment.”

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On November 6, on my way home, I pulled off the highway at my exit and saw the usual “homeless-guy-with-sign” on my left. Looking to the right I saw another fellow I thought I recognized as one of the rotating corner residents. Layered in a hooded sweatshirt and two jackets he ambled down the sidewalk, his full and ragged beard obscuring most of his face. In his left hand he held an oddly sized white envelope with red print on it. Looking closer and I saw it was an absentee voter’s ballot, same as the one sitting on my passenger’s seat.

I’ll confess that I’m jaded towards our election process, I am skeptical of how our President actually got into office, and question if candidates are really going to spend one billion dollars campaigning this next year. Or what about, more locally, voters saying Yes on the Monorail several times but detractors bringing it up until the Monorail concept was sullied and eventually voted down. A lot of money was spent on studies, lawyers, advertising, and purchasing land to go…nowhere.

Like many, I’m sure, I find it tiring and difficult to really understand what a politician is saying they will do and how they will do it. And yes, I certainly could be a better informed voter, doing more than skimming headlines and reading last-minute political statements and reviews. But I do take voting seriously; like freedom of speech, I think it is a right many take for granted.

Look at the recent protests in Myanmar and their violent suppression; citizens were beaten and fired upon by the military while at least two foreign journalists were shot dead, one point blank. Or, right now, with President Musharraf suspending the constitution with emergency rule and dissolving the Supreme Court; true, not every country need be ruled ‘just like ours’ but when its citizens are calling for democracy…

We here in the States have a fairly good life. We do not have to fear the disbandment of the Supreme Court and we can gather in protest on the street in groups of larger than five. But part of that equation lies in our responsibility to pay attention to our politics and hold our leaders accountable. One could argue our political system is a farce but I still believe a vote can make a change. So it is with no small amount of pride that I watched that “homeless guy” walk down the street with his ballot, for I too was dropping mine off at the polling station.

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I haven’t seen it first hand. If it were for the right reason, I might just go. But for me, the right reason is something along the lines of how trauma is affecting soldiers and their communities (surprise), which is not a topic entirely appreciated by the military nor overtly pursued by American media. Our soldiers are coming home at some point; how will we receive them?

It has been said that America isn’t really at war because it doesn’t affect the average person on a daily basis. Not like those who are in it. So I felt I should include some media from other people as a reminder, however vain, that we are killing and we are dying and this will remain forever in the conscious and unconscious thoughts for the soldiers and their families who are neck deep in it.

Most Strykers are based at Ft. Lewis, not far from Seattle. I did a piece on them before we went to war as part of ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s lighter, faster, more tech army. Linked at left is an insurgent video that was reported on by pro-military blogger Michael Yon. While some of the soldiers were ejected from the vehicle, they all survived without serious wounds. Unlike an earlier incident where six soldiers and World Picture News photographer Dimitri Chebotayev were killed when a larger IED detonated beneath their flat-hulled Stryker. Have you heard of the MRAP? It’s got a V-shaped hull which helps disperse the force of a blast. Like body armor with trauma plates, like up-armored Humvees, they’re slow to get into the field. Unfortunately, they don’t protect against EFP’s. I’m a headline skimmer too so this stuff might be a bunch of jargon to you.

Here’s the flickr blog of a guy on an ordnance disposal team in Iraq. I think his images of IED’s are beautiful; the things are meant to kill, but he’s captured some moments. I pinged him, told him I liked his images. His response “We appreciate you looking into our world over here. Believe me…it helps.”

Coming back to the idea of the aftermath, photographer Ashley Gilbertson just released his book “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” which, if you don’t know, is the military phonetic alphabet for “What The Fuck.” In this CNN interview Gilbertson briefly discusses trauma and how no one who has been to Iraq is the same coming back. Here he is on CBS. And the Virginia Quarterly Review. I encourage you to read the essay.

Oh, and here’s an AP photographer’s look at “the forgotten war,” the original war on terror in Afghanistan, from the perspective of a platoon that is doing a lot of walking. By the way, I’ve got a rough draft of the first English language climbing guide to Afghanistan if anyone wants to put up some FA’s. It was something I was supposed to edit for a program supported by the Aga Khan Foundation. The intention was to help develop adventure tourism in Afghanistan, but then the Taliban came back.

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Tonight I talked with husband and wife at a hot pot dinner place.

They both worked for the office of tourism but because it is a man’s culture the wife, with her master’s degree from Holland, only worked part time there because she’d been passed by for promotion so many times it wasn’t worth it. She is still called in to consult when her superiors, who haven’t even bachelor’s degrees, need to use her ideas for their benefit.

She teaches part time now, as does he. He also freelance guides/fixes for journalists and the like.

He sees a huge disparity in economics in the country, with the elite getting richer and the poor staying poor. He believes tourism could save it but the government doesn’t know how to promote for this; he says they only send people to Angkor Wat and they don’t care to do more because it is a corrupt government.

As if to support his statement I noticed behind me a long table of men raise their drinks in a toast. One was a police officer in full uniform, his sidearm with reach of my hand. I asked about this and the man replied that someone had the policeman here because the restaurant needs the police; they are paid, they are bribed, they are treated special because when something happens and you have to call the police, you’d better have them on your side.

There is no national airline and many large hotels, he says, are foreign-owned and don’t employ enough Cambodian staff to help the local economy. He wants to see tourists stay longer and spend more money at Cambodian businesses; now they stay on average only two days and just give money to hotels and transport drivers, not the general economy. Just this last year, he said, they finally reached 1million visitors, compared to 10 million/yr for Thailand and 3 million in Vietnam (I have not fact-checked this).

He believes the government is still a puppet of Vietnam, he hates the communists and equates them to Sadam Hussein and wishes George Bush (who he loves because he is a ’strong’ man) would do the same in Cambodia.

He feels the Americans don’t like Bush because they haven’t experienced the fear of living under the communists–a time where you could be killed for saying something different.

He was 15 when the Khmer Rouge seized power; he was a soldier previously and was imprisoned for 3 months and then sent out to the countryside to work 16 hour days farming.

Apparently life under the Vietnamese wasn’t any different except there was less farming.

He is 47 and has spent 20 years with nightmares from his experience under the Khmer Rouge. He says much of the population his age and older have similar PTSD but because of Asian culture and because of how they’ve learned to survive, the Khmer people keep it inside.

Haidy Dupuy, a media relations person for the NGO World Vision–which has a 1000 staff in country–said the Cambodians are hard to read because their true emotions are covered in a smile. They smile in happiness, in fear, and in embarrassment. A native Cambodian co-worker said to her that to smile is all the Cambodian people have left.

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Web Gallery: 450 px
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Exhausted would be a good word. Travel fatigue: accumulated late nights, early mornings, dehydration, walking, and too much weight in my camera bag. But I am not tired; the experience is too wonderful.

I have spent the last few days as a tourist. The morning after my arrival I made my phone calls and emails to NGO’s I hoped to meet. One was a total shot in the dark but the next day I had a response; from the founder. The day after we agreed to meet and the day after that I was shooting. I’ll tell you more, later, but as a primer read up on them: AFESIP.org. If you want to see passion, look no further. (at left: founder Somaly Mam introducing her girls to the Spanish delegation)

But that is now and I am talking about the yesterdays, for that is what I was doing, seeing the yesterdays of Cambodia.

In the 70’s the Khmer Rouge wrested control of the country to impose their idea of a utopian agrarian society. Urban centers were emptied as massive public works were undertaken: roads, irrigation, farming. As key figures promoted themselves into leadership roles they began to purge the educated. It soon moved on to others, including the Rouge’s own ranks, as paranoia seized the regime. (at right: a bed and restraints)

Toul Sleng was converted from a school to a prison, interrogation, and torture center. Thousands died, many having given up all hope and confessing to anything to stop the torture. (at left: the old school building of Toul Sleng)

Set in the heart of an impoverished residential neighborhood, the site looks much as it was: like a school. Inside are displays of torture implements from water tanks to electric whips and a child’s swing set used to hoist victims. Preserved holding cells and photographic displays fill the buildings.

The Rouge photographed all inmates and this display, for me, had the most impact. Board after board of mug shots filled the school rooms. Children, mothers, old men stare from behind glass. Some are clearly terrified, others angry and contemptuous and still others gaze with hopeless despair, full with the knowledge of their fate: death. (at right: one of many portraits made by the Khmer Rouge)

However death often came slowly; after extensive self-incriminating interrogations, if they were still alive victims were bound and blind folded for a truck ride to Choung Ek, a farm on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. There killers waited with bludgeons, machette and mass graves. DDT was spread on corpses to keep the stench down and to kill any survivors in the open pits. Some 20, 000 were killed here and of the corpses exhumed from 129 mass graves, 8000 were interred in a memorial. Some 80 mass graves remain. (at left: at Choung Ek a memorial to the victims of the Khmer Rouge)

Choung Ek drew its victims from throughout the region, not just Toul Sleng, and at times the executioners could not keep up with the killing of 300+ new arrivals.

In all an estimated 1.5 million people died through execution or starvation under the rule of the Khmer Rouge; their leaders denied knowledge of the killing fields and many, including Pol Pot, lived to a ripe old age.

I think there is a balance in recalling these yesterdays. Undoubtedly they are tourist attractions marketed to foreign visitors, of which I am one. They are also preserved in honor of the victims, that their deaths not be forgotten. The thought is, as written at Choung Ek, as described at Auschwitz, as remembered the internees of the Japanese-Americans during WWII: if we forget it will happen again. (at right: excavated mass graves dimple the ground at Choung Ek)

I would like to believe the interpretive boards at the memorials, that if we remember the yesterdays they will not be perpetrated in the tomorrows. But I think our humanity fails us when our community is global. Just look at Darfur in Sudan. We stand by as genocide is committed yet again. Do I do anything about it? No…I stand guilty with the much of the world. But I believe my awareness matters. And here, in Phnom Penh as a tourist, maybe this is all I can do; be aware, honor, and remember. Though for today’s suffering I know it is not enough. (at left: 8000 victims’ skulls are interred at Choung Ek)

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