ROBAM

In the early 2000s, whilst staying in Cambodia, Andreas Dietl, then a working paediatric surgeon, took out his camera and in his spare time captured the locals and their long standing dancing traditions. Cambodia, was then a country recovering from a devastating civil war and in this context dancing became ‘an unbroken chain that links the present to the past, a vital thread in the fabric of our cultural identity’ in the words of Chum Ngek, master of Cambodian music. The photographs we see today are the result of a perfect symbiosis between performer and photographer. Dietl captures the focus and intensity that come with each movement, the details and emotions in every gesture and most importantly, he manages to capture the cultural and communal heritage it all represents.

Robam is the translation of the word in khmer language that refers to dance. 

Photographs by Andreas Dietl

Text and curation by Tatiana Hopper