Fragile Futures: The Children of Cambodia’s East Tonle Sap Lake

A powerful new photo exhibition from Norton Rose Fulbright and Save the Children in London Bridge, documenting the lives of children living through the climate crisis.

On a special assignment, international children’s charity Save the Children commissioned award-winning photographer Lim Sokchanlina to meet children and families living around Tonle Sap Lake, one of the most ecologically fragile and impoverished areas of Cambodia.

Combining science and art, Lim tells their stories through a set of experimental photographs. The negatives are tarnished with a variety of climate-related treatments, representing the impact of changing weather, extreme heat and pollution on the lives and futures of those in the region.

Saline solution applied to the photos creates white swirls as the salt crystalizes to mimic abstract watery shapes, whilst Liquid DCP, a greenhouse gas found in natural materials like mud, provides a yellowy tinge.