Matt Loughrey in Vice is not colourising S21 photographs. An online petition demanding the article be removed gained thousands of signatures.Īt least 1.7 million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge’s rule in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, compared the alterations to rewriting history. We regret the error and will investigate how this failure of the editorial process occurred.” “The story did not meet the editorial standards of VICE and has been removed. “The article included photographs of Khmer Rouge victims that Loughrey manipulated beyond colorization,” it said. The US-based media firm later issued a statement, attributed to the VICE editorial leadership, expressing “regret” over the feature. Vice on Sunday added an editor’s note before the article later disappeared from the site. Loughrey, who in the Vice interview said he had worked with victims’ families to restore the photos, did not immediately comment. “We urge researchers, artists and the public not to manipulate any historical source to respect the victims,” the ministry said. What was thinking?”Ĭambodia’s Ministry of Culture issued a statement calling on Loughrey and Vice to remove the images. It’s another thing entirely to publish them. In this file photo, Cambodias Prime Minister Hun Sen (L) walks during his visit to the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) headquarters, currently under construction, in Phnom Penh on June 5, 2020. He is falsifying history.”Īnother Twitter user, Cambodia-based journalist E Quinn Libson said: “It’s one thing to do these alterations privately, on request, for a family who lost a loved one. John Vink, a photojournalist, said on Twitter: “Matt Loughrey in Vice is not colourising S21 photographs. It is a very grave insult to the souls of the victims of #genocide. To play around by using technology to put make-up on the victims of S21 or the Cambodian #Auchwitz is unacceptable and must be stopped. “To play around by using technology to put make-up on the victims of S21 … is a very grave insult to the souls of the victims of #genocide,” exiled Cambodian politician Mu Sochua wrote on Twitter. The Vice article did not contain the original images. Only seven of those taken to Tuol Sleng survived.īut the article caused a backlash on social media after comparisons with the original black-and-white photos showed that some subjects had smiles added in Loughrey’s colour images. In the article published on Friday, artist Matt Loughrey said his project to colourise images from Tuol Sleng, the former school turned into the torture centre known as S-21, aimed to humanise the 14,000 Cambodians tortured and executed by the group. Loughrey did not respond immediately to a request for comment.Cambodia has called on US media group Vice to withdraw an article that featured newly-colourised photographs of victims of the Khmer Rouge, saying the images are an insult to the dead because some had been altered to add smiles.Īs of 12:00 GMT on Sunday, the article was no longer available on the website. “We urge researchers, artists and the public not to manipulate any historical source to respect the victims,” it said. The ministry said Loughrey’s project also violated the rights of the museum as the lawful owner and custodian of the images. “To play around by using technology to put make-up on the victims of S21 … is a very grave insult to the souls of the victims of genocide,” the exiled Cambodian politician Mu Sochua tweeted.Īn estimated 1.7 million people, a quarter of Cambodia’s population at the time, were killed between 19 under the Khmer Rouge regime. However, on social media, people posted what appeared to be the original images alongside the edited versions, questioning why individuals’ expressions had changed. The allegation that the expressions on people’s faces had been changed was not raised during the interview. He then worked on further images of victims, adding that more people had come forward with requests.Īsked about the smiles that appeared on some victims’ faces, Loughrey said this may have been due to nervousness and that women appeared to smile more often than men, but he did not say that he had added smiles to some of the restored images. In the interview with Vice, now removed, Loughrey said he began working on photographs from Tuol Sleng when he was contacted by someone in Cambodia who wanted three photographs – including one ID photo taken inside the prison – to be restored. Vice said the report did not meet its editorial standards: “The article included photographs of Khmer Rouge victims that Loughrey manipulated beyond colorisation… We regret the error and will investigate how this failure of the editorial process occurred.” The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said it considered the edited images “to seriously affect the dignity of the victims” and called for them to be removed from publication, threatening legal action.
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