Usually photography is associated with bright, smiling faces… cheerful events celebrated, the everyday moments of bliss in life enjoyed.

Sometimes photographs tell stories far more harrowing and tragic, though.

“I’m just a photographer; I don’t know anything,” Nhem En recalls telling prisoners, who came blindfolded into the room where he was to carefully photograph them before they went on to be tortured; En worked diligently, carefully framing his shots and adjusted the angles of his subjects’ heads, knowing full well they would soon be killed. In a recent article in the New York Times, En reflects on his tragic documentarian role in the Khmer Rouge regime, which killed 1.7 million prisoners in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. As a low-ranking staff in one of the Khmer Rogue torture houses, En was recently called upon to offer personal testimony at the upcoming trial of one of the men responsible for Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” – his commandant under whom he worked for three years.

Nhem En’s photographs – some of which have found their way into art galleries around the United States – serve as a striking testament to the countless innocent people who were tortured to death or sent to the killing fields, in this dark period of Cambodian history. While reticent about his role as a in the Khmer Rouge regime, En approached his work as a photographer with serious diligence:

“‘Look straight ahead. Don’t lean your head to the left or the right.’ That’s all I said,” he recalled. “I had to say that so the picture would turn out well. Then they were taken to the interrogation center. The duty of the photographer was just to take the picture.”

Photography frequently serves to remind us of the good times in life – but often, it also serves to keep us from forgetting the bad.

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