Cambodia : Seeing Hands, Blind Masseuses
15 images Created 8 Mar 2010
With the onset of the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia took a serious turn for the worse from the late 1970s through the early eighties. When the Khmer Rouge were finished killing or starving as much as 20% of the population and finally thrown out of power, the land turned into a lawless morass with all that implies. During this time, numerous people were left disabled. A particularly significant disability was blindness, which arose from untreated disease and sicknesses, lack of medical care, land-mine trauma, torture and even acid-muggings. Seeing Hands is an initiative of the Association for the Blind in Cambodia. Seeing Hands massage centres are small scale businesses operated by blind Khmers employing only blind masseuses. Here, I document the daily events of a small community in a Seeing Hands centre.