#kim hak

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Kim Hak, Unity, 2012 - 2013, Photograph series, Phnom Penh, http://www.kimhak.com/stories/unity/.

Kim Hak, Alive, 2014 - present, Photograph series, Object Space, Auckland, http://www.kimhak.com/stories/alives/.

I attended this exhibition at Objectspace when it was hosting a talk with the director of Bophana where they talk about an app that they had developed with the purpose of educating young Cambodians about Khmer Rouge history. It is aimed for academic use with referencing and has been very useful for me.

“The director of the Bophana Center, Sopheap Chea, will visit Objectspace to share the learnings and complexities of gathering such diverse and personal content when creating an online app.

Sopheap Chea is the executive director of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center and a project manager for the Khmer Rouge app project. He has worked with the Bophana Center for more than a decade. Sopheap holds a critical view of knowledge-sharing in the digital era, having worked on the Khmer Rouge History app with limited information available to him and the added challenge of recognising valid sources.”

“Digital Storytelling and Cambodian History,” Object Space, Accessed September 20, 2019, http://www.objectspace.org.nz/events/digital-storytelling-and-cambodian-history/.

The things they brought with them usually related to the life they’d previously led, or are items of great sentimentality. There is the watch one man had been given by his father when he graduated high school – that he kept hidden during the Khmer Rouge time, and still wears today. One woman secreted the negative of a portrait taken of her when younger; when she arrived in Auckland, she had a print made from it. Another man still has the hammock he used as a soldier during the war. Another, who was a hospital nurse, has a pair of surgical scissors he took as the Khmer Rouge invaded, and his wife has a pair of forceps – objects they used to help others. The same man has kept a necklace he made while in a refugee camp.

Man Hau Liev was born in 1952 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. He now lives in South Auckland. The watch was a gift from his father when he left to study at university in Phnom Penh. In the early 70s, with political unrest in the city growing, Man Hau sent the watch back to his mother for safekeeping. She kept it hidden throughout the Khmer Rouge regime. Man Hau bought a replacement watch, which he later gave to a Khmer Rouge soldier to save himself from execution. In 1982, he was reunited with his mother, and the watch, in a refugee camp. He was accepted as a refugee to New Zealand soon after. 

Maran Keo was born in 1957 in Phnom Penh, and now lives in Auckland. Towards the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, Maran fled to refugee camps in Thailand and then Malaysia. She met her husband in one of the Thai camps and they had three children while living as refugees. In 1985, a friend who had been granted asylum in Canada gave her the soup pot. When Maran and her family were taken in by New Zealand, she packed her clothes inside the pot and brought it to their new home in a rice bag. She lost contact with her friend from the camp, but says the soup pot is her reminder of friendship and kindness in difficult times.

Mike White, “How photographer Kim Hak captured Cambodian survival stories”, Noted, June 14, 2019, accessed September 26, 2019, https://www.noted.co.nz/culture/culture-arts/kim-hak-alive-exhibition-cambodian-survival-stories.

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Does art need to do good in order to be good? Kim Hak: Alive, reviewed — The Spinoff

Read more at The Spinoff

— Amy Weng reviews Kim Hak’s exhibition that tells the stories of Cambodian refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge through the objects they carried – a show that will please many and offend none…

Image: Kim Hak, Alive, A speculum, pohutakawa and scissors, 2018

July 13, 2019

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Interview with Kim Hak in 2014

As a young boy, Kim Hak has seen his mother boil water, and sometimes a wild chicken in a kettle the family have been using during the turbulent years of the Khmer Rouge regime.

His fascination towards objects and heirlooms that Cambodians kept, sometimes secretly, during the civil unrests, has now become photographs in an ongoing series called “Alive”. Each image in “Alive” is the possession of a Cambodian that has endured years of hardship under the Khmer Rouge regime.

The images are currently exhibited at The 1961, . The exhibition will run from Nov 29 to Dec 20, 2014.

Many of these objects belong to Kim’s family, while others are owned by parents and grandparents of his friends. Some, including a book containing handwritten Buddhist Scriptures in Khmer language by its owner, were forbidden under the Khmer Rouge regime and so, had been painstakingly hidden for years.

Photographed to depict the objects’ actual size, these every-day items appear unassuming, even poetic, but tell tales of a harrowing past.

“These images are about war and suffering,” Kim said when met in Siem Reap. “I want the viewers to look deeper into the picture and ponder on the effects of war.”

Originally from Battambang, Kim was born two years after the Khmer Rouge regime ended. Memories of his parents struggling to rebuild their lives after the turmoil caused by civil unrests haunted Kim for years.

Photography, he said, is a tool to memorialise the sufferings of war, even though many of its victims are still reluctant to speak about it today, Kim said.

Through the years, the Cambodian photography practice has evolved with more works on social issues in the scene. “There is an increasing awareness that photography is also an expression of art and can be used to reflect on where our society is heading,” Kim said.

Kim hopes his images in “Alive” will spur discussions and debates among the young Cambodians that have little knowledge of the civil unrests as the subject is largely taboo among the older generation.

“War may kill the victim but it cannot kill the memory of its survivors,” he said. “Through these images, I am paying tribute to those that refused to leave during the war and wipe out this piece of history.”

“Alive” is an extension of Kim’s two previous bodies that touched on the idea of memory. An alumni of the Angkor Photo Workshop, he said it has changed his outlook on photography. “I used to look for beautiful images only, but the workshop helped me to discover my own style without compromising my identity.”