BINH DANH In the Eclipse of Angkor: Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek, and Khmer Temples    Jan 8 - Feb 28, 2009

In Binh Danh's third solo exhibition at Haines Gallery, the California artist has created In the Eclipse of Angkor: Tuol Sleng, Choeung EK, and Khmer Temples, a new series of photographs based on a recent research trip to Cambodia. Here Binh Danh uses daguerreotypes for the first time. He says, "The daguerreotype is a negative image, but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. The daguerreotype is a direct photographic process without the capacity for duplication. But with contemporary equipment, I have perfected a process of exposing a daguerreotype in the darkroom, allowing me more creative control over the process. This series also continues my exploration of the photographic process. Photography has allowed me to meditate on death and its influence on the living. The themes of mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality encompass this series."

As he did for a previous series, Ancestral Altars, shown at Haines Gallery in 2006, Binh Danh has explored the Khmer Rouge period (1975-79) during which an estimated 2 million people died though execution, torture, starvation, and forced labor at Tuol Sleng and Choeung EK. The Khmer temples that were built at Angkor during the Khmer Empire (9th to 15th century CE) often contain wall carvings and mythology dedicated to the Buddhist and Hindu gods, such as Rahu, the snake god that swallows the sun or moon causing an eclipse. Ironically, the deadly Khmer Rouge originated in this same area of northern Cambodia.

Binh Danh was born in Viet Nam in 1977 and immigrated to the United States in 1980 at age three. After acquiring a BFA in photography at San Jose State University, Binh Danh received an MFA in studio art at Stanford University in 2004. In 2009, he will have solo exhibitions at Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, Virginia, and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon. Binh Danh's work is in the permanent collections of Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; M.H. de Young Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago; Oakland Museum of California; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, New York; and University of California, Santa Cruz.

For further information on the artist or the works included in the exhibition, please visit www.hainesgallery.com. Images available upon request.