A Conversation // Speaking Through Photos

by John Suiter

This little group of pictures combines images of Cambodian refugees
that I photographed from 1986 to 1989 with recent comments by the
Cambodian–American poet and painter Chath pierSath, who looked at the
photos for the first time just a few weeks ago.
Chath is the author of two books of poetry, After and This Body
Mystery. He was born in Battambang Province in July 1970,
shortly after the American invasion of Cambodia. Here in the
U.S. I was part of the massive protests against that invasion.
Chath came to the U.S. in 1981, and was in his late teens during
the period I was making these photographs in Massachusetts and
Rhode Island. Although he was in Boulder, Colorado, and
California while I was shooting (he did not come to Massachusetts
until the early 90s), his experiences at the time were very similar to
those of the Cambodian refugees I was getting to know.

I lived in Boston at the time. The Cambodians were my neighbors —
new neighbors who spoke little English and laid low, working the
two–job immigrant life just to gain the barest finger–hold on the
rock–face of 1980s America. I wanted to know them, but how could I?
Our lives were so totally different. Most of them had been severely
traumatized in “Pol Pot time.” All had had loved ones killed, often
right in front of them — as Chath says here: “Their villages razed; the
men beheaded; their livers and hearts eaten and their women gang raped.”
My camera was my only entreé into their “after” world, my only way to
know or empathize with them. That these damaged survivors had to
suffer further at the hands of “neighbors” in Chelsea and East Boston
(not to mention the initial aerial destruction of their country by the
American Air Force) made me ashamed. My photographs, although they
were never published at the time, were at least some means of witness.
(A dozen or so are in the permanent collection of the Boston Public Library).
Looking at them now, I am amazed at how close I got to the people,
I was truly like the proverbial fly on their walls.

I was just recently introduced to Chath via e–mail through a mutual friend.
We’ll meet in person someday soon. I sent Chath a batch of
20 photographs for his response (from which these four are taken),
since I had lost touch with my Cambodian friends from Massachusetts
over the decades and was eager to hear what a fresh pair of eyes thought
of the work I’d done — especially someone like Chath, who had live
through both the Pol Pot era and assimilation in America. Clearly,
the photos made a profound and immediate impact on him, stirring up
memories of his own teenage years in the U.S. The comments appended
to my photographs that you see here were all made by Chath within two
hours of first seeing them. I, in turn, was deeply moved to read him responding
so authentically, immediately, and comfortably, as though speaking to me
from out of the photographs themselves.