September 14th, 2012
The Asia Society
by Tahiat Mahboob
Brooklyn based documentary photographer Pete Pin was born in a refugee camp after the Cambodian genocide.
In the mid-1980s, Pin immigrated to California as a refugee and grew up
in the inner-city of Stockton and Long Beach, California. A graduate of
the University of California, Berkeley, Pin bought his first camera
months before starting an eight-year PhD program at Berkeley. He
eventually abandoned the program to pursue documentary photography.
In 2010, a portrait shoot with his grandmother in her Stockton
garage led to a heartbreaking story. She told him about his family's
experience during Cambodia's Killing Fields.
This was the first time she told him the details and it acted as a
catalyst for him to reach out to Cambodian-Americans across America in
an effort to find, understand and piece together their collective
stories.
Support from the Magnum Foundation
in 2011 led to Pin photographing Cambodian-Americans in The Bronx, New
York. The transformative experience fueled his desire to continue
photographing Cambodian communities around America for what has now
become his Cambodian Diaspora project. Pin is currently campaigning on Kickstarter
to secure funds to travel to Philadelphia and Lowell, Massachusetts for
the project. With only a few days left, Pin is close to reaching his
proposed goal on Kickstarter.
We reached out to Pin through email to find out more about The Cambodian Diaspora project and his vision for his work.
How has your family's history and Cambodia's history influenced you personally and shaped your photography career?
I have always been an outsider in my own community. I was named Pete
when I was born in a refugee camp; my parents idealized America. Growing
up, I was only spoken to in English, and never picked up Khmer, the
Cambodian languge (I, in fact, learned Khmer in college). I have always
felt alienated from my Cambodian identity growing up, and this work was,
to some extent, partially inspired by a desire to connect. My story is,
to some extent, very typical of many Cambodian Americans, to varying
degrees. Growing up, I knew nothing about my family history, the Killing
Fields, etc. Again, this is very typical in Cambodian American homes.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I began to really, genuinely
understand. And everything just unfolded into view. I began to see my
family differently, to be able to attribute certain things to their
experiences during the Killing Fields, and I began to appreciate the
importance of their stories.
When you started this project, why did you begin in The
Bronx, New York? Will you go to other places around America after
Philadelphia and Lowell?
I actually started this project in California, however, with very
initial support from the Magnum Foundation, I was able to spend an
extended period of time in The Bronx. I'm so incredibly interested in
the fact that Cambodian Americans all share the exact same story, that
they came from the same refugee camps, that Cambodian Americans my age
all have parents who survived the war and Killing Fields. However we
were dispersed all across the country when we resettled as refugees,
forming very distinct communities and very different experiences in
America. In time, I would like to capture that visually in this project.
I intend to photograph on the West Coast also, where I have very strong
personal connections (I grew up in Long Beach and Stockton,
California).
What have been some of the most memorable moments and stories you've experienced and heard along the way?
When I started this work, which began with two portraits, of my
grandmother and father and an interview I did with them in regards to
their own personal experiences during the war, I had no intention of
speaking to other Cambodians about their experiences because I frankly
didn't feel properly equipped to do so. The amount of suffering they
experienced in their lives is incomprehensible to me. I want to
understand but this can never come at the expense of someone's mental
health. The fact is that most survivors have not received any mental
health services. They suffer silently. The trauma can manifest itself in
different ways.
However, I am amazed at how much people genuinely want to talk about
this history. Many times it's the first thing they tell me when I enter a
home. I have realized that, for some people, it's not that this history
has been suppressed, but rather — for a multitude of reasons — there
lacks a catalyst for this dialogue. One of the most memorable
experiences I had was in The Bronx. A woman my mother's age I had spent
the day with photographing made this incredible meal for me. Her kids,
who are roughly my age, were in their room with friends socializing and
eating pizza. And as I'm eating this meal alone, thanking her profusely
for the food, seated on the ground in the traditional Cambodian way in
her modest apartment, she began to weep uncontrollably. She talked about
her kids, how isolated she felt, how distant she felt from her
children, and how difficult life is here in America. She never spoke to
her kids about Cambodia, and it's not as if she didn't want to or kept
it suppressed, but rather because of the insurmountable cultural
barriers dividing her from her children.
And her children, of course, have personal traumas of their own, in
the form of inner-city violence. This remains, for me, one of the
poignant realities of the Cambodian American experience, the extension
of the legacy of trauma generationally, and how both experiences inform
and divide families. More silent, but equally as visceral, is the fact
that many young Cambodians cannot speak Khmer (such as myself), while
their parents are incapable of speaking English. I have been to homes
where the generational divide is compounded by the simple fact that the
parents cannot communicate, beyond the basics, to their own children.
You have a lot of contributing Cambodian artists associated with your project. What role will they play?
The contributing artists are friends of mine I have met over the
course of many years. I met Prum, for example, when I was an undergrad
at Berkeley. He performed, while still a student himself, during a vigil
I organized to inform others about the genocide. Now he's an
accomplished dancer and I'm so proud of him. The inclusion of other
artists in the Kickstarter campaign was to honor the fact that many
Cambodian Americans my age are using different forms of
art/media/performance to also explore their identity and struggle. These
other artists are like me, many were born in Cambodia and raised in
America. They form what the author TK calls the Hinge generation — the
generation after collective trauma that is uniquely responsible, by
default of their proximity to history, of writing the narrative of their
parent's story. I am so incredibly honored and inspired by young
creative Cambodians who are taking it upon themselves to do this kind of
work. And I recognize the fact that now, as we all mature into adults
and come of age, that these stories and the creative output inspired by
this legacy, this need to understand, will surface.
What is your ultimate vision for the project? Who is it meant for? What do you hope to achieve?
For the past several years, I have been mainly photographing. Moving
forward, my ultimate goal is to use the process of documentation, of my
work in a community, as a catalyst for a larger discussion about our
collective legacy. I have been thinking very critically about this for
over a year and am working on a proposal for a series of novel community
engagement/public installations in Cambodian communities. Moving
forward, with funding permitting, I seek to integrate this in my
process. I explored this briefly, with very limited resources, in the
Bronx via an informal exhibition in the home of a Cambodian family. I
hope to expand on this dramatically.
Pin's Kickstarter campaign will come to an end on September 20, 2012. Watch the campaign video below.
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