Koun Khmer: Nitha's Lens on Cambodian Resilience in Long Beach

In the sun-drenched streets of Long Beach, California – this bastion of the Cambodian diaspora, the largest Khmer enclave outside Asia with nearly 45,000 souls – a young Mexican-Cambodian photographer sharpens her gaze.

Victoria Venegas, alias Nitha (@nithakounkhmer)

Victoria Venegas, aka Nitha (@nithakounkhmer), turns her camera into a cultural weapon. Born and raised in this port city steeped in scents of prahok and tamales, she captures the soul of a community forged in the fire of the Khmer Rouge genocide, which drove over 100,000 Cambodians to the United States between 1975 and 1994, according to data from the US Census Bureau and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

Shots that defy forgetting

It all started in high school, when Nitha, still a teen, realizes that photography is more than a hobby: it's a passport to her mixed heritage. A graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), she returns there today to earn her teaching credential. Soon a photo teacher, she dreams of introducing kids to this art that "documents the world and probes identity," as she shares on her Instagram feed.

But behind the family selfies lies a deeper quest: “Koun Khmer,” words tossed by her grandmother – “Stay Khmer, my child” in Khmer – that ring out like a mantra against assimilation.

Nitha zooms in on her family and the Long Beach community, the Khmer epicenter where Buddhist temples like Wat Som Sonkusal (founded in 1982, according to temple archives and the Long Beach Post) shelter the elders, guardians of traumatic stories. These seniors, survivors of the Khmer Rouge that claimed 1.7 million lives between 1975 and 1979, pose before her lens. Her series reveal intimate portraits: wrinkles etched by exile, smiles defying precarity – an echo of the community's persistent challenges, where 25% live below the poverty line, notes a 2023 Urban Institute report on Asian-Americans in Los Angeles County.

@nithakounkhmer

A family in full light, a future as artist-educator

Her family is no passive muse: they co-create the visual story. You see aunts in sampot, uncles filleting fish, blending Mexican and Cambodian flavors in a syncretism that screams “hybrid American.” “Photography brought me closer to my roots,” explains Nitha, whose handle @nithakounkhmer echoes this call to memory.

Professionally, she aims for balance: pro artist by day, educator by night, to “uplift” this resilient community, much like other Khmer-American photographers such as Dith Pran (immortalized in The Killing Fields) or award-winners from the Cambodian Association of America.

At a time when young diasporas battle cultural erasure – a scourge documented by UCLA's Asian American Studies Center in its studies on Khmer language loss across two generations – Nitha reloads her Nikon like a resistor. Her images don't just decorate: they demand remembrance. In a Long Beach where pagodas rub shoulders with taco trucks, she frames the future: a “Koun Khmer” for the next generations.

@nithakounkhmer