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Derailment of the mind
Derailment of the mind This is how I tend to look at people who are guided in their thinking and actions by extreme fanaticism. But one might as well say that the fanatic mind is not derailed; on the contrary, it perceives only one rail, only one track to a certain end which it follows…
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Killing Fields
Killing Fields Chamkar Krauch30 burial pits 450 bodies Me Chbar 1 prison burial pit 300 bodies Veal Batt Kanga rice field 500 bodies Tuol Roung Chrey 1 mass grave 400 bodies Banteay O Ta Krey 35 burial pits 4000 bodies Phlauv Meas30 burial pits 200-250 bodies Wat Samdech Muny 6 mass graves 5-6000 bodies Chumnik5-6…
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Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea or the invention of hell Angkar, the mysterious name (meaning ‘the Organisation’) behind which Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime hid, had changed the name of Cambodia to Democratic Kampuchea. During their four-year totalitarian rule, the population was forcibly ‘re-educated’ and indoctrinated according to Angkar’s radical communist ideology. A collection of slogans and orders…
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Angkar, Angkor
Angkar, Angkor Two similar images, two similar words, but referring to two very different memorable episodes in the history of Cambodia. Angkar (“the organisation”), being the name the Khmer Rouge used for its own leadership. Between 1975 and 1979, Angkar’s regime of terror caused the death of approximately one quarter of the total population of…
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Mama, look!
Mama, look! A tree, a plant, so incredibly huge – how is that possible! The sense of wonder begins the moment you get closer to the base of a giant sequoia and try to imagine its circumference. Then you look up along the trunk and see that it goes on forever: the top must be…
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Living monuments
Living monuments Americans are used to everything being big: skyscrapers; paper cups for cola or weak coffee in ‘large’, ‘larger’ and ‘largest’ sizes; and trees of a size unrivalled anywhere in the world. As we walk amongst the giant sequoias, we suddenly feel very small and insignificant. But it is not just their enormous size…
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Death anonymous
Death anonymous A graphic photograph of intersecting lines on a white background. Simple and minimalist. What more is there to say? We find ourselves in a small, snow-covered cemetery in the mountains. The wooden cross is extremely simple. The two beams aren’t even aligned on the same plane. The crossbar is simply attached to the…
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White on white
White on white The bathtub in the snow reveals that we are here on a mountain pasture in winter. The cows are in their shed down in the valley. The marmots are hibernating in their holes underground. And the people have closed their summer chalets and have moved to their homes lower down. The virgin…
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The lonely slipper
The lonely slipper or Shiva and Parvati in a courtyard “Shiva is man and Parvati is woman; they are the causes of creation. All men have Shiva as their soul, and all women are Parvati. Shiva has the form of the male sign, the lingam, and the goddess has the form of the female sign,…
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Floating Baobab
Floating Baobab The decisive moment for this photograph didn’t come until after it had been taken. It occurred to me that it might be interesting to rotate the photograph 90° anti-clockwise, and that is what you see here. It suddenly becomes intriguing: it looks as though the tree is floating on a perfectly still surface…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
