Angkor: an interactive map of Cambodia’s must-see temples – Telegraph, November 28, 2014
…Far from being left to nature, most temples were painstakingly rebuilt over the past century. To what extent they have been reconstructed only becomes clear when looking at astonishing black-and-white photographs from the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), showing excavation work amid mounds of earth and rubble in the early 20th century.
“What visitors see now are temples that have been worked on for many years,” said Andrew Booth, the author of The Angkor Guidebook, a new book that was three years in the making.
“I never understood how much work had been done on them,” said Booth, who trawled for 10 days through 25,000 images kept by the EFEO. “Baphuon was not very well designed and started to fall down as soon as it was built. A picture from 1948 shows just a pile of rubble and early attempts to underpin it with concrete. What are now the temples were put together piece by piece by diligent academics so we can appreciate them. Hats off to them…”