Tonight, on a very warm evening in Siem Reap, Cambodia I gave my presentation at the Angkor Photo Festival as part of their nightly slide show screenings. The setting was the gardens of the famous Foreign Correspondence Club, a site where many ground breaking stories from Cambodia’s tragic past were complied and communicated to the world and for 20mins Greenpeace and the climate change story was told though the great images we have in our archive.
The audience reveled in the diversity of pictures that ranged from our work with scientists in Greenland to an image of a polar bear sitting on a camel, which actually received a rapturous applause. Our hosts were more than pleased and I owe success of the show to my colleagues, Grace Duran (Photo Officer GPSEA), Tom Wang (External Liaison Advisor GPEA) and Sudhanshu Malhotra (GP India Photo Desk) who are all with me in this extraordinary place.
In the middle of Siem Reap over flowing with Angkor Wat tourists and Angkor Photo Festival visitors we are attempting to run a 5-day ‘environmental’ workshop for young aspiring photographers keen produce an outstanding photo story by the end of the week. As you can imagine there is no shortage of stories to be told; the environment is bursting at the seems.
It’s all great fun but importantly we are making our mark in new territories. The Greenpeace message is in Cambodia for a week and we are doing our best to open a window through our images to everybody visiting the festival and inspired enough to want to know more about challenges ahead for a changing planet.
Check out our great Tumblr site ‘Greenpeace at the Angkor Photo Festival’ with daily postings of pictures and blogs.
John Novis is the Head of Photography at Greenpeace International