Cambodian Diaspora Archive
The Cambodian Diaspora Archive (CDA) is a publicly accessible Cambodian photography archive on Instagram created to build community, preserve culture, and teach Cambodian history through pictures. CDA focuses mostly on photographs from families in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The scarcity of Cambodian photographs can be traced back to the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s, when approximately 3 million lives were lost during the Khmer Rouge genocide. Many personal family photographs were lost during this era because the Khmer Rouge punished or executed those with family pictures in the concentration camps. Therefore, the archiving and public circulation of these rare Cambodian photographs is crucial to preserving Cambodian history.
CDA’s founder Kannetha Brown is a first-generation, Cambodian-American photographer from Rhode Island. Her mother and grandmother were able to hide a small collection of family photographs during the Khmer Rouge genocide, and brought them to America as refugees in the 1980s.
