The Mekong always fascinated me. Its waters flowed north into the Tonle Sap during the summer’s monsoon season and traveled south draining into the Mekong Delta during the winter. Therefore, photo-documentation of depicting a boy’s navigation skills down the Mekong or a child, who hovers in the ruins of the Khmer Empire, captures a time outside of the city’s emerging metropolitan domain, such as Phnom Penh. By altering these photos to look like a blue print or carbon copy, revives a nostalgia which may not survive today’s changing environment and rapid modernization issues at hand in Cambodia.
Denise Scott is an artist and independent curator living in Long Beach, California, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She has curated a number of exhibitions of Cambodian American and Cambodian artists in both the US and Cambodia.