"These were by far the hardest paintings I have ever executed to date. Technically, they required accurately imitating the tattered and aged appearance of each photo that I attained from the Cambodian Genocide Museum. Although higher resolution photos eventually became available from the museum, I felt that it was more important to preserve the truer institutional appearance of the photos, which further speaks to the indignities that these unfortunate subjects had to tolerate at the hands of their cruel captors. Since the Museum is sorely lacking in funding to repair roof leaks, etc., many archival materials are in sad shape. Furthermore, this was emotionally devastating to paint, considering what each of these poor souls had to endure.

I felt that this was a story that needed to be told, so I started with a full color painting of Comrade Duch. I then set out to paint the monochromatic portraits to depict the utter senselessness in this secret genocide. These young people were among fourteen thousand (14,000) tortured and killed by Duch, who had sadistically scheduled the deaths of women and children on different days. When the Vietnamese had crossed the Cambodian border, Pol Pot ordered Duch to destroy all his documentation (so there would be no trace of their inhumanity) and to free the remaining prisoners. Instead, he left evidence of over one hundred thousand (100,000) documents and murdered every prisoner in the building.

Ironically, he had been a school teacher who later converted a former high school into the Tuol Sleng torture chamber and prison complex in Phnom Penh. He has since been arrested and is awaiting trial, primarily due to Nic Dunlop author of "The Lost Executioner" who had heroically tracked Duch down and turned him in to Cambodian authorities."


IN THE PRESS

Fergal Keane, BBC
“To witness genocide is to feel not only the chill of your own mortality, but the degradation of all humanity. Even the most brilliant photography cannot capture the landscape of genocide. This room is empty, though it is full. It has been emptied thus, not by the misfortune of disease or disaster, but by the hatred of other people."

Robert Ayers, Art Info
“What makes it all the more unnerving is that this horrific subject matter is treated with a sophisticated, hyperrealist airbrush technique and so exquisitely crafted that I initially took them for photographs. Denis Peterson’s masterful photorealist airbrush paintings are metaphoric silent witnesses - quintessential portraitures of salient human beings and stunningly incorporeal landscapes.”