Upon our return to Shanghai 9 days ago, I put my camera bag down next to my desk. I looked at it a few times, but just could not bring myself to touch it and do the last downloads. This morning I had to clean around my desk, so I had to lift it from where it' s been sitting since we walked into the house after our vacation ...
This afternoon I forced myself to download the last photos from my camera.
I must say I am very happy that I did so, for the mind-fog is lifting; the reasons for my distance from my camera and my lack of interest in anything photographic these last few days are becoming somewhat clearer, I guess.
The reason, it seems, has two sides.
Firstly, there is the fact that I have taken over 20 000 photos - yes, twenty thousand - in just over 4 weeks. Guess I am a little "photoed-out".
Secondly, and I think far more importantly, looking through the last downloads from the cam today - taken of the Killing Fields of Cambodia during the last 2 days before we returned home - made me realise that I used the camera to create a wall between me and what has been a very emotional experience. I have been avoiding looking at these - until today.
Any normal human walking these "fields" would cry or become very emotional. I did not. Only by facing these photos could I allow my emotions to surface and experience what should have been experienced during this visit.
Maybe I have been afraid of it.
Here are some photos and the explanations to each.
The Killing Tree. Here the babies and children of the new regime's enemies were taken by the legs and swung, head first, into the trunk. After this they were simply dumped into a big pit to the right, some still alive, some mercifully dead.
Just some of the 6 odd storeys high stack of skulls collected from the mass graves around an area no bigger than one hectare.
The look on the faces of people walking through the Torture Chambers of Pol Pot. What hit me as a teacher most is probably the fact that in his horribly sick and twisted way, he and his madmen, having abolished all schools and education, perversely used a High School, a sacred place of learning, as his Headquarters of Torture.
The Gym Poles where kids used to do excercises were transformed into Torture Poles to lift people up by the arms - arms tied behind their backs - as a tool to elicit confessions to imaginary crimes. The clay pots once used by children to drink water from, were filled with the faeces and urine of the prisoners into which any one who passed out from pain, were dumped, head first, in order to revive them before the next hoisting.
Of all the places he could use in an emptied out city, he had to use a classrooms for this : torture dens! The photo on the wall is of the body found in this classroom when the Vietnamese liberated the city.
On the second storey of the school, he transformed each classroom into various holding cells.
Some of the photos of merely a handfull of the millions of the victims who suffered in this Place of Learning at the hands of this mad man.
In Cambodia many amputees and people disfigured by the landmines planted by Pol Pot and his lot today make a living from selling books about those time. We bought several of them. Two days ago I started reading the first, "Stay alive my Son" by Pin Yathay. If you can get hold of it, do yourself the favour and read it. It will definitely give you some insights into the soul of this man and why, symbollically, he chose a SCHOOL to do his torture. Excellent story about personal tragedy and, eventually, victory.
2 comments:
It is not easy to go through an experience like this, and I mean by this only visiting and thinking about it, not living through it, and staying alive when others died.
If you already went there, taking photos let you wear an armor perhaps, I am sure you did no harm to anyone not crying, you needed it.
We take a lot of photos when we feel it. They express what we feel often as much at least as what we see, what the camera sees (often more or different even then us).
Go out, take some photos of happy people or of spring flowers or of the snow or just the rain depending what you find around us.
After a traumatic experience, like it was for me my father dying for example, I went out and found strange people going around as everything was normal. But of course, the world did not stop and I had to go on too.
I has a horrible experience with Cambodgia, at the other end of it, without being there.
When I was preparing my pHd, the secretary of the director of the institute I worked, extrem left, invited some of us to view a film, and after that to donate money.
I did not donate, and was horrified by what I have been shown. It was from the point of view of the butchers who did commit those things, showing the children soldiers training in a forest and doing things all at once on command. It was about their highest commander receiving a gift of a watch and being so happy with it. It was about those preparing to butcher others, conditioning others , turned in view of demanding money from the left organizations in Europe (or elsewhere).
It remanded me of the young nazis.
But those where even younger, almost children!
I never got into that institute to work, as after my "negative" attitude the secretary never got me even to speak again to the director.
I did not go to Auswitch were some of my family did dye. Yes, some of our experiences, even only reading or hearing about are difficult to live. But important not to forget.
Also, we have to go through it some time and go on living and creating, writing and photographing. As soon as possible, because stopping will not help those or us.
I still fell that I lived already 65 years more then my cousin, but do not think a lot about it. Just try to live on, as full as possible.
Reading your note in this blog, decided me to try to write about some of the difficult experiences I lived, some others I could not write about because I did not understand it. Thanks!
If life really is a journey you two are living. I have always said life is about enjoying yourself and you two seem to be doing that too. At S21 I wrote signing with tears in my eyes. I remember feeling low for days after. Walking around you can feel the people are strong of mind and body. What a city.
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