What does this photograph want from me? The perpetrator image of Bophana and its reverse shot. Iconographies of the Cambodian Genocide

Abstract

Perpetrator images are those that are part of the machinery of destruction (torture, genocide…). This means that in them the act of violence and the apparatus of image production are interpenetrated. However, this condition does not predetermine the degree of personal, temporal, spatial implication between the two processes. And, in fact, several kinds of hiatuses may occur. The objective of this text is to analyse the production and migration of a perpetrator image-icon associated with the Cambodian genocide (the image of Hout Bophana). First, the article focuses on the process of (pragmatic) creation of this mug shot that identifies the detainee, emphasising her identity. Then, we study the use, re-appropriation, insertion, détournement of the same image in two films directed by Rithy Panh: Bophana, une tragédie combodgienne (1996) and Duch, le maître des forges de l’enfer (2011). In this proposed itinerary, we move from the creation of a performative image (the one that produces an enemy, instead of simply registering him) to its confrontation with the perpetrator (the Tuol Sleng’s director, Duch) responsible for its execution. In so doing, we draw attention to the pictorial and cinematic re-elaboration of the counter-figure, the reverse shot, of that perpetrator image: Bophana portrait as it was painted by the survivor Vann Nath.