In images, in picturesWith his project, photographer Davide Monteleone shows the impact of Chinese expansion on the Asian continent. His images of Cambodia, where the Italian went in 2019, tell of a daily life upset by a forced modernization.
Italian photographer Davide Monteleone spent almost twenty years in Russia. It was there, on the eastern border, that he observed the beginnings of the Chinese “New Silk Roads” initiative announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013. A pharaonic investment of 1,000 billion dollars aimed at reinforce the presence of the Middle Kingdom in the world, through maritime, road or rail infrastructures.
Keen on geopolitics, the 48-year-old photographer, triple winner of the prestigious World Press prize (2007, 2009 and 2011), embarked in 2014 on a vast undertaking to document the impacts of this expansion. A project for which he obtained a grant from the National Geography Storytelling Fellows in 2019.
In extreme poverty
Sinomocene presents itself as a “an attempt to investigate the possible visual representation of seemingly invisible or unphotographable issues of our time”. Davide Monteleone thus worked on an overall vision, focusing for example on the port of Djibouti, financed by China, captured by satellite images. An approach to which was added a more classic approach of photo-reportage, in search of traces of political, sociological or environmental transformations at the local level.
It is with this in mind that he went to Cambodia at the end of 2019. China is the first investor in this country with a tragic history, culminating in the bloody reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. Today, the world’s second largest economy is present there in the construction, industry and tourism sectors, contributing to the boom in growth and the development of a middle class. But, if Cambodia is modernizing to the sound of the jackhammer, inequalities remain, and a third of the 16 million inhabitants still live in extreme poverty.
“This neocolonialism is possible in States with little transparent governance, which poses risks of political interference. »David Monteleone
“What struck me when I arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital, was the number of towers under construction”, testifies Davide Monteleone. In Sihanoukville, a coastal city which will soon be linked to Phnom Penh by a new 190 kilometer highway financed by China to the tune of 1.9 billion dollars, he photographs the mushroom house of casinos and hotel complexes intended for Chinese tourists. Rowdy neon lights, gutted bitumen, dust on the green mantillas of the facades… Cambodians are torn between the fever of opportunities and the fear of being engulfed by the powerful dragon.
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