© John Vink / Magnum Photos

A few pics from recent days at Boeung Kak Lake. There will probably be more in the future: it will take 17 to 18 months to fill the lake and have all 4000 families evicted.

Is it just a matter of size and value? Or is it about respecting your own citizens? Government officials came to measure the houses of the people living on the edge of Boeung Kak Lake, along the railway tracks, before the sand pumped into the lake by development company Shukaku Inc. engulfs them.

More and more houses are being engulfed in the sand pumped into Boeung Kak Lake by Shukaku Inc. development company. People seek refuge on the railroad tracks. I have been working on refugees during 13 years. It seems I keep on doing it…

Nov. 9th is Independence Day in Cambodia. A country’s independence is supposed to allow its citizens to take care of themselves without outside interference. It supposes a certain degree of responsability, of compassion, of solidarity towards its fellow citizens. All nice virtues which are sometimes hard to find in Cambodia. Exactly during the 57th ceremonies […]

The pumping of sand by Shukaku Inc. continues unabated at Boeung Kak lake. Several houses East of the lake are slowly disappearing under the sand coming from the Mekong, and people are forced to move out.

The Laos picture is from the book ‘Peuples d’en Haut‘ (ISBN: 2-7467-0536-2), about 3 communities with a strong cultural identity living in the mountains of Laos, Guatemala and Georgia. There is an Italian version called ‘Altri Monti, Altri Mondi’ (ISBN 978-88-95586-11-3) of the book with only the texts I wrote, published by Liaison. It was […]

The Boeung Kak lake residents tried to voice their concerns about their eviction by Shukaku Inc. development company to Ban Ki-Moon, U.N. Secretary General, visiting Cambodia. The 50 or so inhabitants were prevented from moving beyond the railway station by at least 20 more policemen. Banners and flyers were confiscated. Short scuffles, screams, unpolite words. […]

Pic one is from the month-long assignment I did for a production company wanting to shoot a feature film in Vietnam at a time when there were rather few images from the country.