Kim Hak was born in 1981 in the province of Battambang, in Cambodia. In 2008, he joined Studio Image, created by the French Cultural Centre in Phnom Penh, and did an et internship at the Angkor Photo Festival in 2009 with Antoine d’Agata. In 2011, he was a laureate of the musée du quai Branly Résidences de Photoquai and won second prize in ‘Stream Photo Asia’, in Bangkok. His work is currently published and disseminated on a international scale.
For his series Someone produced as part of the musée du quai Branly Photoquai Residency Program in 2011, Kim Hak created a study that could be described as archaeological, in the coastal province of Kep. Located in southern Cambodia, just a few hours’ drive from the capital, Phnom Penh, Kep was a popular resort town in the 60s. Vast, luxury modern properties were built here by Cambodian and French architects, forging the town’s reputation as the elite destination on the Cambodian Riviera. The town was almost entirely untouched during the Vietnam War and under the Khmer Rouge regime. Nature simply reclaimed its rights and the houses, like the Angkor temples, have been engulfed by tropical vegetation. “When I just look from outside of all 1960s style villas, I might consider, they are abandoned or became ghost villas. When I get into them deeper and deeper, I find out that SOMEONE lives and takes care of those houses. Someone has 'become one' with these strange ruins over the years. They are not empty but full of signs of the past mixed up with the present time."
Series produced in 2011.
