At SOSORO Museum, Colin Grafton recalls his Cambodia before 1975
More than 70 people attended the launch of “Cambodia, November 28, 1972 – April 7, 1975” at the SOSORO Museum in Phnom Penh on Thursday 10 September. The British photographer told the story behind his images and his own journey, up to his departure from the country ten days before the Khmer Rouge entered the capital.
Book launch at the SOSORO Museum
Guests came in through the garden entrance on Street 102. Copies went from hand to hand around the high tables. Some read standing up, glass in hand. Colin Grafton, in a beige jacket and scarf, signed books at a table.
The book has come back to where it started. SOSORO had offered the photographer a two-week exhibition of images unrelated to the dancers of his first book, Dancers. The response from visitors and organisers convinced him to turn it into a book.
Speaking to the audience, Colin Grafton went back over the story of these photos and his own path through a country at war, up to the collapse of 1975.
Phnom Penh under the Khmer Republic
The title gives the exact dates of his stay. Colin Grafton arrived in Cambodia on 28 November 1972. He left on 7 April 1975. Two years and four months, the last of the Khmer Republic.
The book runs to 143 pages. It came out in August 2026, in English, published by the author in Phnom Penh. The layout is by his wife, Keiko Kitamura-Grafton.
Born in London in 1947, Colin Grafton travelled overland to Asia in 1969. He taught English in Laos from 1970 to 1972, then in Phnom Penh. The capital was under siege. He photographed the streets, the cyclos, the classical dancers.
Some images show the war sideways. In 1974, residents sit on the Tonle Sap riverbank while artillery fires on the far side, in Chroy Changvar. In 1973, near the Royal Palace, a street sign reads “Place de la République”.
He also left the capital. In 1974, through the connections of his Cambodian girlfriend at the time, he boarded a military helicopter to Pailin. There he photographed hundreds of sapphire prospectors, men and women, working the riverbed.
7 April 1975: leaving from Pochentong
On 7 April 1975, Colin Grafton left Pochentong airport on an empty rice plane bound for Thailand. Ten days later, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. “We naively thought the crisis would last only a few weeks or months,” he told Angkor Database in 2021.
The photos of Prum Sisaphantha
The book also tells the story of Prum Sisaphantha, a dancer and colleague of Colin Grafton. In 1974 she asked him for photos to document dance gestures. One Saturday afternoon she hung a backdrop of Chinese brocade and put on her practice costume. He shot a whole roll of film by the light of the window. He kept one set of prints. He gave her the other, with the negatives.
After the Khmer Rouge victory, Phantha and her family were sent to Battambang. Her younger sister, Van Thang, kept the photos hidden for three years. In 1978, the Khmer Rouge found them.
In 1979, after the regime fell, Phantha travelled alone to Phnom Penh. The family house was in smoking ruins. The negatives were ashes. With a piece of charcoal, she wrote on a nearby wall that they were alive, in Battambang. The portraits published today come from the set Colin Grafton took with him.
Colin Grafton, fifty years on
From Bangkok he went to Japan, where he taught until 1980. He then returned to Thailand as a volunteer in the Cambodian refugee camps. His first exhibition on Cambodia was held in London in 1981.
He came back to Cambodia on holiday in 1992 and settled in Phnom Penh in 2014. With Keiko Kitamura, he has since worked on exhibitions at Bophana Center, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Meta House.
For this book he went back to the places he photographed fifty years earlier: Oudong, Pailin, Siem Reap, Banteay Chhmar and Phnom Penh. He looked for what had become of the people and the places. At Banteay Chhmar, his 1972 images set against those from the 2010s and 2020s show the scale of the looting of the carvings.
A documentary has been made about him. Just Being There, by Robert Carleton-Chhaing, was shown at a private screening at the Institut français in Phnom Penh on 31 July. It is due to be presented at the Phnom Penh Film Festival in May 2027.
Read also: Colin Grafton’s biography on Angkor Database
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