As an avid traveller throughout Asia, Jacques-Edouard Berger had planned to visit Angkor, at the very heart of the Khmer civilization which he found so fascinating and had been researching for years. The country's delicate political situation repeatedly thwarted his plans, although he continued to work on the project by organizing a number of trips in search of major Khmer temples in neighboring Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma). His untimely death in November 1993 kept him from ever realizing this dream. Under the auspices of a colloquium at UNESCO headquarters in September 1996, I myself was offered occasion to visit Angkor. I made the trip in March 1997, together with a few friends, including Jacqueline Dousson and Francis Lapique of the EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), members of the founding team for our "World Art Treasures" web site (as of July 1994). Together with Dousson and Lapique, Olivier Saltet - who accompanied us on our journey and to whom we herewith express our heartfelt gratitude - drew up the site's present program: "The Divine Breath of Stones". It is thus beyond our memories of him that we continue to render present a person for whom art had become a vocation, and who lived to share his passion with others. We look forward to gradually enriching the program with Khmer works photographed by Jacques-Edouard Berger outside of Cambodia and in various museums of the world, and which are part and parcel of the grandeur of the Khmer civilization.  

René Berger, May 1997.