Words and Photos by Sam Naiman
From the Forgotten Kingdoms Blog:
I’m here during the hot season and the equatorial sun can get to 115 Fahrenheit at mid day. We are shooting for close to a month, each day the sun tracing a clean searing arc over the enormous buzzing sprawl of Phnom Penh, where the nature of the light is as much a construct of the city culture as it is a condition of it’s place on the planet. The overcrowded roadways spew massive clouds of government subsidized-diesel smog into the sky, giving sunlight a warm, dreamy feel. Even when the sky is bluest here, its also a bruised grey, and shadows imbue a slight smear anywhere they are cast.
During the day, my camera constantly wears multiple Neutral Density filters combined with a polarizer, searching out tufted, gold-lined clouds and that extra tick of cerulean. These skies are consistently a tenth of a stop away from photographic catastrophe.
In the streets, food is cooked over charcoal, making layers of iridescent haze everywhere. The crush and chaos of traffic- the windows, the overdressed chrome decals, and the mirrors of a million tuk-tuks shoot constantly moving points of light across every surface, through shadows and beam into the smoke.
At night, the fires persist. Flame is an intimate source of light as well as bare fluorescent tubes colored much bluer than the standard day-lighting hue. Depending on the level of commerce going on, these can be strung in clusters all-over, or as little as a few to a block. The traffic is just as frequent and chaotic, headlight beams roaming every surface. With street lights committed to main boulevards, images can very quickly drop off into an abyss of black, the movement of the city life hinted at in small, scattered glimpses.
The sunrises and sunsets wrap everything in electric pink. The city exhales to a slightly cooler evening reprieve, or the shared potential of a new day with a catalyzing energy that seems to emanate directly from the low sun.
The light in Phnom Penh is constantly and deeply changing. Completely immersive like the city itself, created immediately at any given moment by a people hurtling by, a life balanced deftly on a razor-thin line between past and future.
SAM NAIMAN, S.O.C. 