Displaced

With the project «Displaced», which is dedicated to poor, landless communities in Cambodia, photographer Steff Gruber highlights the far-reaching impacts of displacement. In a long-term project, he portrays these people and the precarious situations in which they live, the causes of which go back almost five decades. Four decades after the Khmer Rouge regime banned the ownership of private property and destroyed all land records, Cambodia started to experience a property boom. In the last few years, slums in the capital city have been cleared – sometimes by force – and the destitute people who lived there have been forced to move to larger settlements on the outskirts of the city, where access to sanitation, electricity, jobs, schools and medical care is difficult. For example, they live at the cemetery "Smor San", along a railway track or on boats on the shore of a luxury hotel. Today, more than a quarter of Phnom Penh’s population of 2.3 million live on occupied land or are otherwise affected by poverty. These informal settlements – almost 300 in total – consist of often unsafe, makeshift shelters, and the people who live there have no guarantee they will be allowed to remain.