Smor San

Photographer

Steff Gruber

Category

Black & White Photography - Photojournalism

Company

Steff Gruber Photography

Submission Group

Professional

Year

2023

Country / Region:

Switzerland

Smor San is a community that lives in a cemetery that is still visited by relatives of the deceased. The inhabitants have constructed makeshift houses on top of tombs and coffins, or inhabited vacant burial chambers. Here they eat dinner, watch TV, hang clothes to dry, care for their kids, and sleep – just centimeters away from the dead. They moved into the cemetery with around 200 graves after sand dredging had led to the collapse of their houses on the riverbank. Steff Gruber’s documentation of the lives of life in Smor San is part of an ongoing long-term project on the landless poor communities in Cambodia.