Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia

by Michelle Caswell

Roughly 1.7 million people died in Cambodia from untreated disease, starvation, and execution during the Khmer Rouge reign of less than four years in the late 1970s. The regime’s brutality has come to be symbolized by the multitude of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners taken at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of “enemies of the state” were tortured before being sent to the Killing Fields. In Archiving the Unspeakable , Michelle Caswell traces the social life of these photographic records through the lens of archival studies and elucidates how, paradoxically, they have become agents of silence and witnessing, human rights and injustice as they are deployed at various moments in time and space. From their creation as Khmer Rouge administrative records to their transformation beginning in 1979 into museum displays, archival collections, and databases, the mug shots are key components in an ongoing drama of unimaginable human suffering.

Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award, Society of American Archivists

Longlist, ICAS Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Photography

231 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the archive of photographs from the Tuol Sleng Prison in Cambodia. These are photographs of people who were killed by the Khmer Rouge. These photographs, while documenting most of the people from one prison, represent a small number of the total people killed during the time the Khmer Rouge were in power.

This book is a detailed exploration of these photographs, how they have been used, and occasionally misused, including one art book which seemed to ignore the fact that these were real people who had been killed. This book also investigated the power of documentation as the approximately 17,000 people killed in the Tuol Sleng Prison in Cambodia is a small percentage of all the deaths during the time of the Khmer Rouge, but because they are documented there is a focus on them. There is an interesting discussion of how they were used during a war crime trial, with Duch, the person on trial arguing that if the person had not been photographed he was not responsible for their death.

There is very interesting discussion about the importance of provenance in archival collections, including the reason for the records being created. In this context these photographs were taken as part of documenting prisoners, only seven people living to actually describe their experiences.

This is a very interesting, and disturbing book to read. The detailed exploration of why the photographs were created and the many ways they have been used provides ways for thinking about other archives, and their potential use. It also highlights the need to collect a range of resources.

This is a useful book to read to think about the social justice implications of archives, and other historical collections such as local studies collections in public libraries as it really encouraged thinking about who is included and who is excluded.

[Vannessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theoretically rigorous, deftly applying theories from archival science, history, anthropology and the study of visual culture and photography, Caswell analyses the origins and subsequent 'lives' of the 'Tuol Sleng mugshots', photographs of some 5000 detainees found at Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng prison and their status as art, legal evidence and objects enabling the performance of human rights. Caswell explains in detail her arguments and expands and repeats them carefully, allowing the reader to have no doubt about the points she is making.

[Tylor Serpico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caswell manages to incorporate an incredible amount of relevant and compelling theory to give an exhaustive review of this topic. It made me rethink my own conceptions of the archival space, and the ways in which our own histories are formed and made accessible.