PHOTO POST: Pret Svey, Cambodia

A few months back, I went to New York’s MOMA on a freezing day when there wasn’t much else to do. The museum had an exhibit of Walker Evans‘ photographs of the rural South. He documented the Great Depression with his camera, and I’m really drawn to his work. 

Evans and I aren’t the only people curious about – and frankly somewhat drawn in by – rural life. It’s a lust to explore how the other half lives. It’s connection with the question of why some people are born in villages in Southern Cambodia and others into a penthouse in the Upper West Side. Why? Is it all just random? Is reincarnation real? Is life better in one than the other?

This village was one of the most colorful places I’ve ever been. It’s extremely hard to get there as a tourist, unless you are bringing in aid. You have to drive 5 hours from Phnom Penh, then take a six-hour slow boat. Then figure out where the hell the actual village is. The color isn’t for tourists. It’s simply created in the day to day here. The water is a fetid, dank and gorgeous green. The laundry is everywhere. Rusted barbwire and violent sunlight abound. Roosters, too. Thick, green jungle, filled with dangerous snakes and two cans of paint in lovely shades of bright blue and mossy green.

It feels like Disney created this place, but then you step off on a dock and there’s no waste management. There’s no running water.

I took all the color out. I was curious if bleeding the saturation would render something similar to my home state a century ago. If it would tell a different story than my eyes registered at first arrival. All the color makes you feel happy. You take it out, and what you are left with is more authentic.

I’m wondering if Walker Evans’ photos would have told a completely different story if he’d been able to shoot in color. I think the answer is yes.