PH1 Sisowath Quay during the Khmer Republic Era ( 1973 )

Captured and signed by British photographer Colin Grafton, these two 1973 photographs capture Phnom Penh in the fragile eye of an accelerating storm. While civil war raged across the surrounding countryside, the capital maintained a surreal, deceptive normalcy, insulated for a fleeting moment from the frontlines. Although he was just an English teacher at the time in Phnom Penh, Mr. Grafton’s lens delicately recorded this calm before the storm — a poignant visual archive of an urban populace living through the city’s final, oblivious twilight before the siege closed in.