Angkor Photography Festival
The Angkor Photography Festival is the first such event to be organized in Southeast Asia. This festival was created in 2005 and for the fourth time the temples of Angkor will become a hub that will draw concerned photographers from across the world.
The strong educational goals of the Angkor Photography Festival sets it apart from other photography festivals. The Angkor Photography Festival is built around the free workshops it organizes for emerging Asian photographers.
The programme for 2008
The festival is run by volunteers and a large amount of goodwill. Nonetheless, this 2008 edition provides a rich panel of events.
The programme for 2008 will be represented by 5 evenings audiovisual presentations curated by the workshop tutors and one evening of audiovisual presentations of worldwide subjects curated by the festival and Christian Caujolle, one of its invited curators.
The festival will as well host a series of free photographic workshops, present its outreach
programmes and hold a fundraising photo auction for the Anjali childrens project.
Free Workshops for Young Asian Photographers
The Angkor Photography Festival will host a series of free workshops taught by renowned photographers who have many years of teaching and photography experience. Roland Neveu, Patrick de Noirmont,
Antoine d’Agata and Suthep Kritsanavarin have volunteered to tutor a selection of 30 young
photographers from all over the continent in photojournalism and documentary based photography. One of the free workshops will specialize in commercial photography and will be tutored by Laurent
Zylberman & Vincent Soyez. 6 to 8 young photographers will be selected to participate in this corporate and commercial oriented workshop.
Last year, the Paris Match award for the best reportage produced during the workshop was given to the Indian photojournalist Selva Prakash for a very sensitive and powerful photo essay about AIDS patients and their families.
The Angkor Photography Festival helps these emerging photographers to participate in other
international photography events and assists with general career advice.
Outreach programmes
ANJALI, a centre for underprivileged children
The Angkor Photo Association founded Anjali, a centre that provides a safe and happy educational environment for almost 80 children. This project was firstly associated to the Green Gecko House but is now running independently under the name of Anjali. Many of Anjali’s children are from poor or troubled families and most of them were begging in the streets of Siem Reap, helping their parents to feed their families.
Every day the project gives the children a well-rounded education that includes, aside from the traditional curriculum of reading, writing and arithmetic, English, ethics, photography and performing arts classes.
During the festival there are photo workshops for the children and at the end, thanks to renowned photographers’ print donations, a fundraising photo auction for the Anjali childrens project will be held.
Arts Therapy and Participatory Photography Project
As part of the Angkor Photo Festival, Arts Therapists Paula Holme and Isabelle Rodker together with photojournalist Hazel Thompson combine Arts Therapy and participatory photography to
support and empower marginalized groups. Theatre, painting, voice, movement and photography
in a therapeutic environment are used for self-expression, to provide relief from psychological pain, trauma and everyday stress, and for advocacy.