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Justees is an income generation project located in a Phnom Penh slum.  That’s a short hand description anyway. The kids at Justees have all been on the streets struggling with addiction to sniffing glue, but now they’re in the final phase of a recovery program that boasts a 99 percent success rate. Most started using glue due to the pain and hopelessness in the lives at home, and they worked hard to recover when those issues were addressed. The next step for them is vocational training and getting a foothold in life.  Justees employs them, teaches them crucial skills, and pays enough to keep them in school. The project is run by Servants, a Christian organization from New Zealand, whose members are known for immersing themselves in the slums and working side-by-side with the poor. The two men who started Justees may seem irrelevant in the eyes of a world bent on power and real evidence of significance. One is a practicing medical doctor, yet every Monday he is side-by-side with the guys printing t-shirts.  I’d love to develop this more — adding text and possibly documentary video, so I’m looking for opportunities to publish and show it. (Watch as a slideshow or click on each image to advance to the next one.)

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This is just a taste of a story I hope to complete this year (2011).　It’s about more than colorful performances, but that’s part of it. I hope to portray the community of people who make up Sovanna Phum: their art, their energy, and their real lives. I want to see how they relate with Phnom Penh and how they stand apart from the city. I think it’s going to be a very interesting journey. I have quite a few hopes for this story as it develops  (publication, exhibitions, etc.). Mostly I’m just thinking about what it will take to get it done well.

Before the show

Laughter backstage as the drum troupe gets dressed and ready

A dancer waits for her cue

Shadow puppets behind the screen

A drama unfolds

Monkey dancers provide comic relief

The audience (a small one this night) reacts to the monkey dancers

Shadows of actors and puppets in conflict

Holding candles behind the screen creates beauty and tension onstage

An actor/dancer makes a quick costume and make-up change

Nearing the climax during a performance of Roussey Dek, a beautiful mixed piece

Shadow puppets battle behind the screen

Not to be taken too seriously, a drum performance ends with smiles all around

Most of the receipts, varying between “enough” and  “meager,” are divided among the artists

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For many years, Sovanna Phum has been preserving and extending the traditional arts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. Sovanna Phum. Shadow puppetry is a mainstay of Sovanna Phum, along with classical dance, drums, music, and sometimes a circus troupe. The shadow puppets and drums are made by hand on site. Even the tools used to craft them are made there over a charcoal powered blaze. Recently the association started a project to renew their stock of large shadow puppets, and I am following the story–along with photographing the weekend performances and the lives of the traditional artists.

I started working on a larger story about Sovanna Phum early this year (2011). There are many potential behind the scenes stories and angles: the Sovanna Phum Association and its hard work and history, the making of shadow puppets (and drums), the colors and vitality of traditional arts in Phnom Penh, the real lives and struggles of the artists themselves (including more than one art families), and Phnom Penh as a city yearning to reemerge as a cultural center in Asia again.

I’d love to get some of these stories published and exhibited in different venues.

Here are a few photographs of shadow puppets being made.

Children and shadows, practicing before a mixed dance and shadow puppets performance

Skins are purchased weekday mornings for drums and shadow puppets

The leather is stretched on a rack in the morning then tanned for days in the sun

The puppet patterns are hand drawn by Kosal, co-founder and director of Sovanna Phum

Puppets are punched out slowly taking many hours and days depending on the size

It takes another person more hours to finish and stain them

Making and repairing the tools

Large shadow puppets in action during at weekend performance at Sovanna Phum

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I started working on this story last month (Feb, 2011). I’d love to finish it well and get it published. It’s a behind the scenes story (with individual stories) of hard work and hope we can all relate to but few ever see this way.

Cambodians are streaming into Phnom Penh every day looking for a new start in the big city. Young people come to attend universities and vocational school. They all have dreams that begin with finding a way to make money.  This story is about a vocational school that trains students how to repair cars and  motorcycles. Two or three hundred students are crammed inside at any given time. They range from young kids straight off the farm to well-worn men in their forties. Each can graduate with a certificate as soon as they master the material and pass the tests. They pay a relatively low one time fee that’s good for as long as they want to stay. Most live upstairs free of charge, cooking and caring for themselves: no alcohol is permitted and the doors are locked every night at 7pm. Many vocational schools in Phnom Penh are scams; they prey on people from the countryside. But this school has qualified teachers and the graduates really find jobs. It’s a struggle, but it’s paying off.

Here are a few photographs to give a sense of where this could go.

Re-assembling a motorcycle engine as other students observe

Each student has a unique story to tell

A teacher supervises students working on car engines

Studying after hours

Lunchtime

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Prahok is the soul food of Cambodia. It’s fermented fish (some would say rotted). Eat it straight, add a dab for seasoning, or put some in a bag and let the flavor leach out into whatever you’re cooking. Japanese have fermented soybeans (natto), Koreans have fermented cabbage (kimchi), but Cambodian are the only ones who dare to keep fish for three months outside a refrigerator and then eat it. You gotta love that.

I just read an article about prahok by author Karen Coates on Faster Times.  She laments that some Cambodians who have made it (money) are giving up prahok, as if it’s beneath their rising status. The smell reminds them of worse times. Prahok wreaks, famously so, but that’s no reason to give up a good thing. I can vouch that my neighbors are keeping the faith, and in style. They gather annually to make a year’s supply of prahok, and have a great time. These photos, from earlier this week, will take you through step one: cleaning the fish to prepare it for salting and aging.

It all begins here

Followed by lots of mashing and rinsing

Dress appropriately and enjoy the process

You can’t rinse, or mash, too much

The finished product!

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