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OUR MISSION The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation is a pro-bono creative agency for arts/culture/human justice non-profits, dedicated to redirecting the public’s attention to matters that affect us all. The Foundation does this by partnering with worthy non-profit causes and training our creative expertise on dramatically expanding awareness of their product and message.

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THE PROJECT From 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge enslaved, tortured and killed over 1.7 million Cambodians in one of the most lethal regimes in history. During these brutal years, Pol Pot and his totalitarian party sought to silence and eradicate Cambodia’s artistic class by systematically hunting and murdering 90 percent of Cambodia’s performing artists. The Khmer Rouge had a motto for their victims—“To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”
Today, the Cambodian Living Arts (CLA) “Masters,” artists who survived this grim chapter of Cambodian history, are harnessing their final days sharing their craft with a new generation of students. The undertaking is one full of hope to preserve what the Khmer Rouge failed to completely destroy—their extraordinary music, their remarkable stories. The CLA, an organization whose mission is “to support the revival of traditional Khmer performing arts and to inspire contemporary artistic expression” has the powerful vision that “by the year 2020, Cambodia will experience a cultural renaissance so dynamic that the arts will become the country’s international signature.”
The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation (VRF) has assembled a unique group of American creatives fully equipped to help the CLA accomplish this vision. We believe it time to properly document the lives of these individuals in a manner their stories deserve, and in an approach that honors and celebrates their significance in our world. We aim to create a powerful photographic portrait archive of each Cambodian Master, their art form, and the next generation of students. We'll create this work using a film-based large-format photographic process and present this work at life-size, to permanently reestablish the nation's powerful arts and culture over the memory of genocide. This work will be displayed in traveling exhibitions throughout the world, as an iconic centerpiece for the Cambodia arts renaissance. A feature-length, broadcast-quality film of the entire process will be created, and in addition, a higher-education lecture series (beginning at St. Lawrence University) will also result. What will transpire is a beautiful story about the arts renaissance in Cambodia today.
And with your support, we can make this ambitious goal a reality—and give you a piece of history.

Project location: New York, NY

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Project By

George Del Barrio

New York, NY

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George Del Barrio, a portrait photographer and partner at The Vanderbilt Republic, was born in Queens, NY in 1976.

1. vanderbiltrepublic.org
2. superbiate.com