An alumni of the 21st Angkor Photo Workshops held in February 2026, Nepali artist and photographer Jyoti Shrestha penned her post-workshop thoughts and reflections in this blog which she very kindly shared with us. We reproduce it here with her permission.
April 2026
Some experiences don’t have a clean beginning. This is one of them. Most of the time, you feel like time just flies by, but this was different. It flew, and yet, when I look back now, it feels like years happened in those ten days. The Angkor Photo Workshop should honestly be in the top things to do in Siem Reap if you’re selected, of course. It was intense, beautiful, healing, and difficult all at once.
As adults, we get so caught up in life that we forget what real friendship feels like. The kind you experience on the first day of school, when someone just adopts you and suddenly they are your best friend for the whole year, maybe longer. I thought that only existed in childhood. I was wrong. Angkor brought that feeling back. That magic.
Launched in 2005, the annual Angkor Photo Workshops is Southeast Asia’s longest running photography workshop, an intensive ten day program for emerging Asian practitioners held each year in Siem Reap. Twenty participants are selected, guided by a team of mentors to create a new body of work that is shown publicly at the end. Behind it all is Jess, Jessica Lim, alongside mentors like Antoine d’Agata, Sean Lee, Veejay Villafranca, and Uma Bista.
When I first arrived in Siem Reap, I instantly felt safe. The place does something to you. Sugarcane juice and chicken fried rice by the riverside. Fish amok. Coconut juice. A kind of ease in how people move and welcome you. Angkor photo workshop had always been on my list since I started photography, and to finally be there, living it, was something else.
I met artists from across Southeast Asia, and it made me realise that this was the first time I had truly spent time with people from our region in one place. We are neighbouring countries, yet we rarely meet, and because we do not meet, we do not know each other’s stories. Angkor changes that. Hearing Bo, Sandar, Richmond, Shashwat talk, you realise you are not the only one figuring things out, not the only one trying to make sense of things. Everyone was coming from very different places, carrying their own experiences, and you could feel that in the work they were making. There was a kind of quiet openness in how people shared, and over time it created something rare. Real trust. Real friendship.
The workshop itself was intense. Every photographer had a completely different way of seeing, and when you looked at everyone’s work together, you could feel how differently we all move through the world. Classes happened in a café, someone presenting from a sofa, others on the floor, wherever there was space. Every morning we brought in what we had shot the day before.
By day four, everyone was exhausted. Full days of class, shooting at sunrise, shooting again at night, days filled with mentors sharing their work. And still, even when barely functioning, everyone showed up for each other. Any idea you brought in was met with encouragement, and at some point it started to feel like a lab for mad scientists. No external pressure, just the internal kind that pushes you to do your best work for yourself.
I ended up doing things I would never normally do. I went to the shadiest karaoke places, saw things in clubs I still do not have words for, and drank with Temple Club’s DJ, manager, and waiter until 7am. In between all of that, I was working on Sunsaan. Photographing strangers never came naturally to me, but somewhere between the exhaustion and the trust the workshop created, something shifted. Sleep disappeared, food became secondary, and we were basically living off 7-Eleven, calling Shashwat and Bo at 2am to eat before heading back out to shoot.
We were staying at Sweet Dream Home, run by NAK, who also runs NAK’s Restaurant. It became our shared space, where many of our shoot moments happened, but also where we returned in between everything. It grounded the experience, giving us a place to pause in the middle of the intensity.
As the workshop moved into its final days, the focus shifted towards shaping the work. Editing, sequencing, and trying to make sense of everything we had produced. The second to last day felt especially intense, with everyone working against time to bring their projects together.
The showcase brought a different kind of clarity. Seeing Sunsaan on the screen alongside everyone else’s work, I realised how much had changed in a short span of time. I had moved from hesitating to photograph strangers to being able to approach, stay, and engage. More than the images, what stayed with me were the relationships that formed through the process. Angkor made that possible.
The last few days felt like reaching a creative limit and staying there. There was exhaustion, but also a sense of fullness. We ended with karaoke, and later at Jess’s house, in a way that felt like the last day of school, when you do not know when you will all be together again.
Angkor reminded me why I picked up a camera in the first place, back in 2013. Not ambition or exhibitions, but something simpler that I had stopped noticing over time. Ten days in Siem Reap brought that back.
Two months later, it still feels meaningful to be part of this community. Bienyl always hyping me up, Dwinda sending messages of love, Bo sharing her photos, Richmond sending pictures of his new baby, Jessada’s warmth, Thục’s steady friendship. I still think about running into Aakash randomly in Siem Reap, Kevin always appreciating images, and Niranjan whenever I see anything underwater. Ekeky making people laugh, Rith bringing imagined worlds to life, Aroma with her stories, Kanha with her obsession with passionfruit ice cream, Bunsu opening his café, Satita with her drawings and expressions.
I miss everyone.
All text and photos courtesy of Jyoti Shrestha. © 2026