Earlier this week Cambodia’s UXO salvage divers received a call from Marine Conservation Cambodia. The NGO is based on the island of Koh Seh which is around one and a half hours from the coastal town of Kep. Members of the staff on the island found several sections of UXO and the team went to investigate.

The team conducted searches on both land and water and found a large section of UXO which was was of no risk to the inhabitants of the Island. The search was prioritised because of the islands young residents. 

This is now the third year which I have been documenting the team. For more on the project please see here, here  here and here oh and here too and many more.

I should have posted this a while back but with other commissions, projects, …. life…. I just have not had the chance. 

This was a commission that has turned into something bigger, I went to Vietnam to do a few stories and became intwined in this world of regret and redemption, I spent time with a group go US Military Veterans now in their 60’s and 70’s who in one way or another found their way back to Vietnam, a country they had not seen since they were young twenty somethings thrust into war. Their paths back were all so different but they seemed to be looking for the same things, the same answers.

The story ran over 5 pages in Trouw…..there is more to come on this so stay tuned.

Tonight is the private view of FUTUROGRAPHIES: CAMBODIA-USA-FRANCE an exhibition in New York  exploring the complex relationships between the three nations.

“While Cambodia, the United States and France share a violent past—colonial repression, war, bombing campaigns, genocide, migrations of refugees, deportations, and forced ‘repatriations’—this multi-media exhibition explores another set of parallel histories in which alternate futures were (and are) written, proposed and even determined. Featuring visual art, photography, music, performance, sculpture, installation, and text, it reveals the ways in which people imagine and generate futures in contexts most often represented as ones of crisis, disaster, and victimhood.”

Included are a selection of the portraits of the UXO Salvage Dive Team which I made to accompany the long term project about the team. The portraits have published on the BBC and The National Geographic .

The show will open to the public on the 20th November.

the UXO Salvage Diver Exhibition is coming to an end at the Kerry Packer Gallery at the University of South Australia. The project has been there for a month since ending at the Brunei Gallery in London. I heard that the show at the Brunei had over 7000 visitors so looking forward to hearing how many people visited the show in Australia.

There is going to be a brief rest and then the diver portraits will join a group exhibition which is set to start in New York then onto Paris and finally Cambodia, so plenty more news to come.

Sorry for the radio silence over the past couple of weeks its been a busy time planning the next step for the divers project. The show finished at the Brunei Gallery in London at the end of September and was really well received. The show has now moved and opens today at the Kerry Packer Gallery in Adelaide, South Australia.  I should have some images from the show soon to share.

The exhibition will be the same as the show at the Brunei Gallery but also will have a projection of the Diver Portraits which has also separately been really well received being published by the BBC and National Geographic . 

The show will for a month and after that I will have some more news to share, The life of this project and the new audiences it reaches is really good to see, I spoke with the dive team last week when working on a different project ( again more to come !! ) there off season should be coming to an end soon so looking forward to bringing you some more images of this remarkable programme.