Photo of the Day, Phnom Penh, working-class neighborhood

In an informal district of the Cambodian capital, a woman holds her child close to her. The gesture is simple, the look tender — she speaks to him in a low voice, he alone matters.

Around them, a setting of colorful corrugated sheets, rusty doors, walls weathered by the seasons. What stands out, however, is the almost vivid palette of these makeshift facades — deep greens, warm yellows — and that broad blue sky spilling over the roofs, generous light on a modest everyday life.

I didn't try to dramatize, simply put the lens in the right place at the right moment, where a mother and her child formed, for an instant, the exact center of the world.

In the working-class neighborhoods that still edge many of Phnom Penh's suburbs, life arranges itself as it can, often cramped, but seldom without warmth. This image says more than many reports.