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IN CONVERSATION WITH:
PRAEPISUT PEECHAPAT

This interview is a part of our collaboration with Angkor Photo Festival, where we feature a group of participants from the latest edition of their workshops. Launched in 2005, the annual Angkor Photo Workshops in Siem Reap, Cambodia, is an intensive photography workshop for emerging Asian practitioners. It aims to provide an affordable, high quality learning experience while guiding each participant in developing their own distinctive artistic vision and voice. 

The 20th edition of their annual tuition-free workshop will be held from 7 – 16 February 2025 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The workshop is now open for application until 12 August 2024 (Monday, Midnight, +7GMT). Find more information here. 



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Lê Nguyên Phương: Hello Fueng*, so good to chat with you again! During the Angkor Photo Workshops, you created a body of work titled Nice to See You Last Night. I was absolutely captivated when I first saw it, and would love to know more about how it came together? What was your initial thought process?

Praepisut Peechapat: Hey Phuong, hope you’re doing well! Prior to the workshop, I was at a time when I started to sense the departure of time and memories I had with my loved ones. My family will die, my best friends might grow apart from me, and one day I will forget. I got scared of the fact that everything would eventually perish, despite knowing that it’s completely natural. The process of holding onto the memories while knowing that they will fade fascinates me, and I start photographing the people around me simply because I didn’t want to lose them hopelessly.

So when I arrived in Siem Reap for the workshop, I was hoping that I would be privileged enough to come across someone who would share a connection with me and enjoy that brief moment we shared together.

I wandered around the city looking for a place where I would belong, that I would fit in, that I would have something to hold on to, even if I was in a stranger’s land. I ended up accompanying a girl who was waiting by the riverside for her boyfriend to finish his work everyday, and later on, she took me roaming around in one of the city’s largest nightclubs. I spent my remaining nights of the workshop repeating this ritual.

LNP: The photographs in your work urge me to think a lot more outside of my comfort zone, especially the intense portrayal of skin to skin contact in the nightclub settings. How do you reflect on your experience making photographs in this environment?

PP: I put myself in the most crowded, outgoing location, thinking that I would feel the warmth and friendship strangers might offer me, and I was completely wrong. I saw young teenagers coming together in groups, dancing their hearts out to the extremely loud music and fancy spotlights. Many welcomed me to join them, seeing that I was a loner there. Somehow I got a strange feeling, and it seemed to me as if everybody else, just like me, was feeling super lonely deep down inside. This ‘alone together’ atmosphere I witnessed hooked me, and I think the photographs I made were a reflection of what I was emotionally experiencing at that time. Afterall, it was not only about making connections as I initially intended, but also an exploration of the disconnection and alienation that I received from the people and the place.

LNP: Many of your other works focus on the theme of identity and self-contemplation. How does Nice to See You Last Night sit within your practice?

PP: My previous works mostly revolve around the reflection of my own thoughts on a philosophical idea, but this project was the first time that I focused on the relationship I have with other people. For me, the overall experience is still an introspection, but it is now through the connection and disconnection between me and the people I met.

*Fueng is the nickname Praepisut told me to call her by the first time we met in Siem Reap. It is pronounced exactly like my name, Phương. 


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Praepisut Peechapat (b.1998, Bangkok, Thailand) is a multi-disciplinary lens-based artist and illustrator. She was introduced to photography during highschool and it has been her core practice ever since. Her past works during her studies mostly explore philosophical introspective themes, using varieties of processes including pseudo-scenario creation and manipulating ready-made materials. Praepisut recently shifted her focus to the more intimate projects, with her own personal experience and close relationships as her main subjects, while simultaneously expanding her works to the form of bookmaking and illustration.

To see more works by Praepisut Peechapat, visit Instagram




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