Vandy Rattana (born 1980 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia) is a photographer and artist, now resident in Taiwan, whose work is concerned with Cambodian society.
One of a generation born into the fragile period after the fall of Pol Pot whose Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79) executed most artists and intellectuals,[1] Phnom Penh-born Vandy Rattana cut short his studies in law at the Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia in 2005 to teach himself photography.
[2] Following the footsteps of Vietnam War era Cambodian photojournalists Sou Vichith, Dith Pran and Tae Kim Heang,[3] Rattana was inspired by the capacity of photojournalism to bear witness and its potential to document Cambodia's troubled and damaged culture, and to provoke activism.
His short video Monologue[8] offers up homage to the sister he never met, interred in a mass burial site alongside his grandmother and five thousand others who were discarded during the Khmer Rouge regime in 1978.
[9] Rattana achieved international acclaim for Bomb Ponds (2009),[10] acquired for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative[11] in 2012.