Born 1980 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Rattana initially began his university studies in law but after two years, in 2005, he left the course to study photography; he had become interested in the work of a group of photojournalists who documented the effects of the Vietnam War and of the Khmer Rouge regime under the rule of Pol Pot in Cambodia (1975–1979). In 2007, with five other artists he founded the activist art collective Stiev Selapak (Art Rebels) in Phnom Penh, establishing workshops, residencies and collaborative art projects.

Rattana was not only concerned with recording the long-term physical and social effects on his home country, he also sought to provide some compensation for the destruction of important historical archives during the cultural cleansing inflicted under Pol Pot.

Bomb Ponds 2009, Kompon Thom