On The Meeting of Khmer Soul

22/12/2009
Écrit par CSH (cambodgesoir)
Translated by Monikhemra Chao

Nicolas Cornet has just taken out a very nice book on Cambodia in which the journalist-photographer leaves on the meeting of his inhabitants. He testifies their wealth, their complicacy, as well as of the beauty of the Kingdom.

In moderation having called Cambodia, the work of Nicolas Cornet is a pretty invitation to go to discover the khmer earth. The author offers a photographic narration across six chapters, which are so much small trips in the provinces of the Kingdom. This book benefits from aesthetic photographs and turns out to be particularly well researched. He allows especially to show the diversity of this country, and proves so that it is often reductionist to sum up his tourist trumps in the simple temples of Angkor …

Nicolas Cornet shares his life between France and Asia since the end of 1980s. He lived to Ho Chi Minh-Ville and besides published a book of photographs on Vietnam in 2004 (1). The journalist works for several years on Cambodia where he performed several reports. "I found this complex, mysterious country. I wanted to deepen my knowledge on his subject." During two and a half years, he researched, read Lasts, Malraux, Shared out, the researchers of the French School of Far East So many authors who knew a particular adventure with the Kingdom. "My front-door on Cambodia is the hang glider of Mekong, where cultural, religious and geographical similarities are numerous", he explains. "I wanted to leave on the meeting of Khmer soul, to disclose peculiarities."

Nicolas Cornet thinks that the Cambodians "are very tied" to their earth, to the religious aspects. His book plunges the reader in the middle of rice fields, and invites him to walk on the small ways on beaten earth, to use the Cambodian relaxed rhythm of life. The inhabitants of this country remain not less opened to outside influence, notably Hindu there. "In Cambodia, social structure is inherited from India, but it is less screened off than in the system of cliques," he points out. It results from it of relations with the nice "Cambodians and of a big human nearness."

Cambodia precisely makes feel this supplement of Khmer soul definitely …

Cambodia in Editions Aubanel, 240 pages, 300 photographs. Price (France): 39 euro.
(1) Viêtnam in Editions of the Oak