Angkor Photography Festival offers educational opportunities to Asian photographers

This event often passes under the radar, due to the remoteness of the location that lies a world away. The temple pillars of Angkor Wat, with their legendary Bayon faces, recall to Western eyes the exotic otherness of the Far East. The Angkor Photography Festival will return for its third year in Siem Reap, Cambodia from November 17 to 28, 2007. The focus of the event is not only the appreciation and advancement of journalistic and commercial photography, but the education of key techniques to students of the region.

There is an open call for volunteers on their site, to help with the educational programs dedicated to enriching life for the local disadvantaged. These include beggar children who, after a sudden introduction to photography through free festival workshops, have gone through transformations both outward and inward. The kids look healthy, happy, and lively, not like a piece of scenery in the hard places of the developing world. You can learn more about the festival here.

From the 2006 Angkor Photo Festival Flickr gallery:

"Concurrently, choreographer Sangeeta Isvaran and art therapist Paula Holme focused on the relationship between photography, memory and dance. Associating sound and movement with their self-portraits and photos, the children developed stories that evolved into a vibrant performance of photo-projection, dance and poetry."

Access the 2006 gallery at Flickr here.