Those Who Never Left

Land and life are inseparable from spirit—forests speak, waters carry memory, and communities move as bearers of meaning. As I move through this landscape, marked by violence and historical rupture, I sense that these presences have never left. They remain in the land itself—held as memory, as scar, shaping how I come to see and feel it. Perception tightens; the visible turns slightly unfamiliar, carrying a quiet unease. Working through the language of magical realism, I stay close to the everyday. The images come through moments of chance and brief encounters. Through photography, I allow the environment to disclose itself beyond its surface. Light becomes a threshold; time loosens; forms shift. What appears is not constructed, but found—something already there, though not always acknowledged. These works are shaped by my own encounters with the unseen—subtle shifts in atmosphere, the sense of being accompanied by something without form. In Siem Reap, Cambodia, this feeling deepens. I begin to feel that the land holds what has not fully passed, and that these presences carry traces of collective wounds, remaining as quiet, persistent marks.. The project challenges photography itself as a medium of communication, treating it as a portal through which these non-human presences may be approached, sensed, and momentarily translated. In doing so, it reflects on how such encounters subtly reshape belief and perception, drawing the viewer into a system of relations where the world is not observed from a distance, but experienced as something that is already in conversation with us.