Dith Pran, the real-life photographer on which the story is based, has died. It must have been some sort of strange fate that I picked up a copy of The Killing Fields last week. I have always had an interest in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge-led genocide of the 1970s. The movie is now part of my collection. A week later the man that inspired the film is dead.

Dith Pran, New York Times photojournalist and killing fields survivor died March 30. A Cambodian interpreter and photographer, Pran worked with journalist Sydney Schanberg as he covered the Cambodian conflict for The New York Times in the early 1970s . When Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, fell to the Khmer Rouge, a group of communist rebels, in 1975, Schanberg was forced from the south-east Asian nation. Pran, who had previously sent his family to America, stayed behind. And endured four years of an unimaginable hell.

The Khmer Rouge forced an agricultural revolution on the nation, moving the populations of entire cities to the country-side to labor in the fields. In what became known as the killing fields, an estimated 2 million Cambodians were murdered by Khmer Rouge cadres, one third of the nation’s population.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, toppling the neighboring communist regime. Dith Pran survived, while most of his family were killed. He escaped to Thailand in 1980 and was reunited with his family and Schanberg in America.

Pran worked as photojournalist with The New York Times and headed an organization founded to educate people about the Cambodian Genocide. He hoped to see Khmer Rouge officials tried for their roles in the destruction of a nation, and was elated when trials began to take place.

Schanberg’s book, The Death and Life of Dith Pran, was made into the 1984 film, The Killing Fields. Dith Pran was portrayed by Dr. Haing S. Ngor, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role.

Pran’s photographs are an eerie peek into a very dark time. More disturbing is that his images were a portent of Cambodia’s future. While no images of war are pleasant, knowing what followed makes them almost heartbreaking to view. His later images are playful, the work of an imaginative and skilled photographer.

I don’t know what draws me to Cambodia or its troubled past. I remember my mother saying something when I was young about Cambodia and it’s people being sent to the fields. Maybe that was the genesis of my interest, a comment in passing.

Farewell, Dith Pran, journalist, documenter of darkness, survivor. You left a lasting impression on me, and those that know of your struggles and successes. You not only told a story, you lived and survived it.

More photos and the full obituary at The New York Times.