Simon Toffanello has lived in Cambodia for the past two years and has toured extensively through its untraveled lands. His on-going "Road Cambodia" project reflects that journey and adventure in an innocent developing country.
Ultimately these photographs capture modern Cambodia as seen by an outsider, an often humorous land of contradictions and paradoxes. The photographs presented here are primarily concerned with a sense of place, space and atmosphere, of simply being there in an unfamiliar landscape. These images steer away from social documentary photography, this is travel photography less travelled, showing the colour of ordinariness in a country as it is reborn from a dark history.
Simon Toffanello studied fine art and filmmaking at St Martins School of Art in London and his still images echo a cinematic feel, fragments of a narrative, life captured in one image that draw you to visualize what came or might come in the next. In addition are his multiple image photographs, pictorial time jumps reminiscent of magazine photo stories and split-screen movies.
After completing his degree Simon Toffanello went on to make award winning short films that played at film festivals in Europe and the UK before returning to photography. He is currently working as a freelance based in Phnom Penh combining his personal projects with commercial work for NGO’s and corporate companies. He also helped to start, managed and taught a photography course to university students in Phnom Penh.
