Text and all images by Michael Klinkhamer©
The “optimism” photos by Michael Klinkhamer refer to a series of selected smartphone photographs submitted by the Dutch photographer during the 2015 global LG Life’s Good campaign. These images were part of a wider international push promoting everyday optimism and positivity.
Social Photography within a commercial world.
On the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh city, you can find a wasteland that tourists never visit. Here the city of Phnom Penh used to operate a huge garbage dump, landfill, named locally “Smokey Mountain.”
For the poorest people and their children, this is still a place to scavenge through the stinking, smoldering, and burning waste. They sell whatever is found to survive.
The landfill was operational until 2009. A newer landfill is relocated further outside the ever-growing city limits.
The people dwelling in Steung Meanchey find housing and employment in collecting garbage.
Since this area is basically a wasteland it attracts the poorest people looking for a cheap or even a free self-made hut made of plywood and what’s found. Trying to make it in the big city.
Most family’s come from the impoverished countryside and migrate to the big city hoping for a better future “between a rock and a hard place.”
People are hopeful and always friendly toward visitors
Contrary to what you expect the energy here is hopeful and always friendly toward visitors. The locally operated Cambodian Children’s Fund has a lot to do with that positivity but it is also a known trait of the resilient Cambodian people in general.
The CCF is the driving force in education and optimism for most of the children growing up there in poverty. For them the only realistic way out is education. The CCF foundation was established by Scott Neeson in 2004 and is an unconventional success story helping people help themselves.
I was lucky to work with this organization as a photography trainer and also published many picture stories and interviews with founder Scott Neeson since 2010.
Ever since I visited this place I was infected by the positivity and sparkle you will receive once you see, smell, and walk around here and get in touch with the locals.
See real poverty is just heartbreaking, but things are improving.
At the same time, it still is by no means a walk in the park here, and real poverty is still very real and oppressive and just heartbreaking.
Over the last ten years, I have visited the Phnom Penh Steung Meanchey waste dump many times and established a relationship with some people there and helped individual cases as much as I could. A very positive achievement was made with the availability of brand new small houses that sprung up in cooperation with world housing.
With this Canadian initiative, there was hope for families to live and raise their children in a more livable environment and take pride in their lives and wellbeing.
At the same time, an impressive university has been built right there where the garbage used to burn. The Neeson Cripps Academy was opened in 2017 With higher education for a brighter future.
Yes, I also took a lot of pictures there and yes, I admit there are hard truths and real beauty to be found in these people and their children. A deep respect for the way they are surviving. I believe it is my privilege to raise awareness with my camera for real situations of real people fighting for a better life.
It’s is the job of a social photographer to show truth and reality. Michael Klinkhamer
There is also criticism and abjection by some critics as they see my pictures as “poverty porn” and sensationalism. For me, there is no hiding for the truth, reality, and beauty in my pictures.
A chilling truth is also that the mainstream media and big NGOs follow their agendas. They often only report about social injustice during a disaster to raise funds for their own selected programs they support. While overlooking the real issues right in front of them on the ground.
With my pictures, I can reach you directly and you can support for example the CCF foundation. The pictures here were shot on a smartphone and edited as black and white for an ad campaign to raise awareness of optimism in the world.
‘Lust for Life’
2026 appendix and book release.
During my first visit and assignments in Cambodia, I took a photo series of the NGO “Cambodian Children’s Fund” and conducted an interview with its founder, Scott Neeson. This sparked a fascination with what they at CCF had achieved for the people and children living in those slums.
It was exactly what you would expect from a slum, but I noticed a truly positive energy and tremendous activity. The area was part of a ‘landfill’—a mountain of finished household waste—and the entire surroundings and the people living there had traditionally been garbage pickers: people who sift through the garbage to extract the last valuable and still usable items. Copper wires, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, etc.
Because the landfill had since been moved to a new location, the people now lived off recycling and sorting reusable materials. In the city of Phnom Penh itself, you sometimes see women pulling a gigantic cart often with small children inside, filling it with cans, bottles, and all kinds of recyclable materials.
You don’t have to go far to see the hard life in Cambodia for yourself. But there, in the Stung Meanchey-Phnom Penh suburb and the garbage dump—an area also known as the ‘Smoky Mountain’ due to the smoldering and smoking pile of waste—it is all even more extreme. Many of them are people who want to start a new life from the provinces with little or nothing. With a few wooden poles and planks, they build a hut and send their children into the garbage dump to pick out bits and pieces and to sort waste. Most children enjoy the work and often do it together with their entire family.
And that was precisely the reason for CCF to establish a shelter and medical facility there in the garbage dump area. Hundreds of children have food to eat and receive care every day. The older children study at a university set up by the organization, participating in exchange programs.
Actually, this photo book is only about the photos, but there is much more to tell. At its core, this is a ‘social documentary photography’ series.
At the same time, it is also Social Photography within a commercial world.
That is, at its core, the banality of social photography that I am fully aware of. But is the ‘commercial world’ component therefore a reason not to take certain photo subjects?
In this case, I allowed myself to be influenced by the relationships I already had in the Stung Meanchey garbage-mountain slums and my genuine affection and interest in the people living there.
The challenge of creating a high-quality photo series with a smartphone. And my past experiences in Europe with sponsored magazines and corporate publications.
Looking back now, in 2026, I see the banality of the project more clearly, but even now, I would do it again. Although back then it was out of ambition and interest. For me as a photographer, the result of this series was what mattered.
I didn’t need an LG 4 smartphone for the photos. I had enough cameras and better equipment.
But for this admitted marketing story, I found it interesting at the time to see how far you could go with a smartphone in 2015, regarding image and image quality, and to tell my story about the people of Smoky Mountain through the photography community and social media.
Have the people in the photos and their families benefited from it?
Organizations like the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF) have heavily intervened in the area, building housing, schools, and medical support systems for families who previously lived on the dumpsite.
Today, Stung Meanchey has evolved into a heavily populated urban district with improved infrastructure, paved roads, and residential neighborhoods, shifting away from its past as an infamous slum
I think that all the attention and effort is ultimately a step in the right direction. When I visit now, you can see that CCF has brought about a huge influence and a positive contribution.
It has already been 11 years, and the photos from the LG4 project are on my backup hard drives.
Still, it is nice to re-evaluate the project and photos every now and then—and by that I mean a much larger selection, than those 10 images then, from the series—select them, and now bring them together in a book.