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IN CONVERSATION WITH:
PRETIKA MENON

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 Pretika, thank you so much for the opportunity to chat with you about your work Dog Time 7. In your images, we see you being welcomed in someone's home. The photographs are at times playful, while many are striking. Can you tell us more about your journey in bringing this work together? What was your process? 

Pretika Menon: Hey lovely, thanks for reaching out! I started off feeling rather lost, with no direction at all. At the time I was in a depressing phase of my life and needed an external jolt or pull, so I naturally gravitated to places that welcomed me, and then I kept revisiting. I wanted to connect with the local people of Siem Reap, as well as authentic friendships and moments. So I wandered a lot, on bike and on foot.

It started with meeting a friend of a friend at their home, and then on the way back to the hotel I kept stopping my bike. The road I was on had homes with shops or cafés at the front, and I started to photograph the people managing these stores. At a café, there was a large family gathering and they invited me to join them for dinner. It turned out that after a long day of serving customers, they had shut shop and were celebrating a wedding anniversary. They didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Khmer. We used a lot of Google translate and they mostly joke and laugh. And they fed me. I asked if I could photograph them and they agreed. They were friendly and curious and as the night went by, it got livelier. Over the course of my time in Siem Reap, I would stop by their house every evening at 7pm, before continuing to other spots. I was drawn to how close they were as a family, and the dynamics between them. It was interesting to see how each member behaved, to each other, and to the camera. After many days, they got used to me and didn't react much to [my presence], so I felt like I was experiencing some honest moments with them.

After Mr. Nge's house I would go to meet Pum Pum, a Cambodian friend I made at a late night food truck, and she started taking me to her usual spots and office outings, as well as her home where I met her daughter and son. I got to spend time with them, we played games and made art together. It was all really wholesome. It was great to be an outsider and an insider at the same time.

LNP: Your other project, Avé Maria, is also a beautiful portrayal of a family that was not your kin. Could you describe the differences in photographing the family members in this series compared to your approach in Dog Time 7? What are the differences between wandering through the streets of Goa and Siem Reap?

PM: The main difference is the language barrier. Apart from that, the [experiences were] actually quite similar. Everyone was very welcoming of me and seemed to accept me as a friend. There was a novelty that I was so different, and I could sense curiosity in both cases, and I was curious too. In Avé Maria, the family I document is a family of four, [consisting of] three generations of women living in a house together. In Dog Time 7 the story takes place in multiple different spaces, showing family interactions as well as amongst friends.


There is a difference between living in a city versus living in a village. Eugene in Goa is a farmer, and our relationship is quite intimate. I spend a lot of time with her and try to integrate [with her] as much as I can, so she does on occasions call on me for help, which I really enjoy. I do hope that I return to Siem Reap and meet Mr. Nge, his family, and Pum Pum again, and to have a long lasting bond that [can stand the test of] time.

LNP: What do you feel like you have learned the most from making Dog Time 7?

PM: I learned that persistence [to build] familiarity can break the language barrier. I try not to be a menace, or to overstay, one really has to gauge these things. And I try as much as one can to be of some use, so that I am not taking up too much time or space. I also feel that at root, we are all the same, we want to be seen and appreciated. It is great to know that I can travel to a foreign land and make friends with people who are different from me and not let our differences get in the way. These friendships came at a time when I was feeling quite alone, and really had a healing effect on me.

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Pretika Menon is a photographer based in Goa. She has worked in fashion and fine art for more than a decade as a photographer and creative director.


Inspired by cinema, street life and childhood stories, Pretika's works capture the dramatic in the everyday for her characters. Her work encompasses her fine-art painterly aesthetics in mise-en-scène with undertones of dark humour, that intrinsically weave boldness and the surreal into the fabric of the post colonial cultural identity.


She has been featured in Proud South, a global index by Dutch trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort on trends in fashion and culture in the Southern Hemisphere. She was published in Kidz Paris 2022 - an art book that showcases 50 young creatives across the globe, curated and art directed by Raphaëlle Bellanger and Anna Gardère.


She is a regular contributor to Vogue Italia after being chosen in Condenast's talent hunt in Mumbai in 2019. She has been featured and published in major fashion publications in India including Vogue India, Harper's Bazaar, Verve, Grazia, Platform, Say Zine to name a few. In 2022 She was part of a residency funded by Vogue Italia to create her first collection of NFTS on the platform VOICE.


Pretika has won the 2023 PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant. She was selected for and attended the Angkor Wat Photo Workshop in January 2024 at Siem Reap. She is currently working on a group exhibition for her personal project titled ‘Dhon’ (Two).


She continues to develop her own artistic style in Goa.

To see more work by Pretika Menon, visit Instagram



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