The deputy media group on Sunday apologized for publishing the work of an artist who edited photos of victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide to make them look like they were smiling, and it’s a failure of the editorial process’.
Vice Asia published an interview with Matt Loughrey on April 9 in which he set out his work to color photos of prisoners held in Tuol Sleng Prison, where they were tortured and interrogated before being sent to the killing fields. Not only were they colored, but the prisoners’ faces were processed to look like they were smiling. The article has since been removed.
Cambodia condemned the edited photos shortly after they were published. The Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said it considered images “to seriously affect the dignity of the victims” and asked The Guardian to take them away from the threat of legal action.
‘On Friday, April 9, VICE Asia published an interview with Matt Loughrey, an artist who was restoring and coloring images from Security Prison 21 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, used by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its fall in 1979. The article contains photos of the Khmer Rouge victims who manipulated Loughrey outside of color. The story did not meet VICE’s editorial standards and was removed. We regret the mistake and will investigate how this failure of the editorial process took place, ”the company said said in a statement.
In the interview, Loughrey said that he started working on the photos after someone from Cambodia contacted him to have three photos restored. More requests followed soon. Although some inmates had already smiled at their photos, Loughrey admitted that he added smiles to others.
The Ministry of Fine Arts said Loughrey’s work violated the rights of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum as the legal owners and custodians of the images, reports The Guardian.
“We urge researchers, artists and the public not to manipulate any historical source to respect the victims,” the ministry said.