Pulitzer Prize winner shows at Sisters Art Works

In 1979, photographer Jay Mather rented a car in Thailand and drove deep into Southeast Asia, and into the middle of one of the bloodiest events in history.

In January of that year, the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian forces had seized the Cambodian capitol, Phnom Penh, and war was raging. Hundreds of thousands of refugees poured into camps along the boarder with Thailand; starvation and disease were ever-present, and in the end the Khmer Rouge murdered 1.7 million Cambodians.

Journalist Joel Brinkley, son of acclaimed news broadcaster David Brinkley, accompanied Mather into Cambodia. At the time, both young reporters worked at the esteemed daily the Louisville Courier-Journal, and it was their goal to track down a Louisville doctor working in the Cambodian refugee camps, document what they found, and bring the full story back to the U.S.

What resulted was a five-day series in the Louisville paper, written by Brinkley, photographed by Mather. Their reporting won the paper a Pulitzer Prize for

international reporting and brought expanded attention to the devastating conditions in Cambodia.

Mather, now a Sisters resident, reunited with Brinkley and returned to Cambodia last summer in an attempt to gauge potential change since their trip in 1979. The Roundhouse Foundation, based in Sisters, got wind of the trip and provided funding, without which the project would have not been realized.

Now there are two collections of photographs. The shots from last year's trip will be included in a book due out this year, written by Joel Brinkley.

Mather's photographs are intimate, stunning and immediate. Shot in both black and white and color, they allow an untampered view into the horrors of war as witnessed in 1979, and the continued hardships as seen in 2009. The 30-year interval brings into full view a country yet to recover and make it into the 21st century.

See Jay Mather's show at the Sisters Art Works Building, 204 W. Adams Ave., in Sisters, opening April 12. Mather will speak about his work at an artist's reception on Friday, April 23 at 7 p.m. The talk is free and open to the public, and will feature photographs not shown in the exhibit.