My father James (Jim) travelled from Australia to Papua New Guinea circa 1968. While George Jung was getting into cocaine on the West Coast of the U.S, the Vietnam war was still grinding on (my uncle Gerald was actually there), Elvis was cooking up his Comeback Special and the Wahine disaster happened in NZ, he was in the highlands working in his capacity as a mechanic. At the time Australia was heavily involved in administering the country as a protectorate-type situation and practical expertise was in high demand as it attempted to install infrastructure over a difficult terrain, amid an uncertain political and social situation.
Occupied for at least 50 000 years (and probably a great deal longer) by modern humans, PNG is home to some of the last extant tribes to suffer the dubious honour of contact with the world at large. My father told of meeting with peoples still unconvinced of the advantages of this largely unsolicited communion and determined to preserve traditions such as headhunting, cannibalism and apocalyptic intertribal warfare.
Occupied for at least 50 000 years (and probably a great deal longer) by modern humans, PNG is home to some of the last extant tribes to suffer the dubious honour of contact with the world at large. My father told of meeting with peoples still unconvinced of the advantages of this largely unsolicited communion and determined to preserve traditions such as headhunting, cannibalism and apocalyptic intertribal warfare.
He spoke a few words of pidgin and toted a leaking Soviet snapshot camera around the mainland with him (complete with holes in the shutter curtain), documenting the annual singsing at Mt Hagen, a massive pan-tribal eisteddfod presumably designed to ease or at least oversee local tensions and offer an opportunity to assert prestige in a nonbloody manner. Today, though the same tensions prevail, the occasion seems to have devolved into a self-conscious photo op rather than the raw and sometimes chaotic expression it was in my father's day, with the cthonic splendour exhibited in these images no longer in evidence. Perhaps that is for the best. The heart sinks as I calculate the number of birds of paradise required to furnish the glamour depicted here.
These are some of the slides that were the result of Dad's forays into photography. Time, suboptimal processing and his shitty camera rendered many of them virtually indecipherable until we decided to haul out, inspect and restore the survivors. We're about halfway through the process now and will post more onsite as they become available. I wish he was here to see and discuss them but he succumbed to cancer a decade ago.
I'm incredibly grateful to be able to see the things he witnessed.
Though untrained and unencumbered by notions of political correctness, my father shared the intransigent suspicion of authority, appreciation of the absurd and fierce independence of the people he recorded. They reflect each other clearly through the lens.
These are some of the slides that were the result of Dad's forays into photography. Time, suboptimal processing and his shitty camera rendered many of them virtually indecipherable until we decided to haul out, inspect and restore the survivors. We're about halfway through the process now and will post more onsite as they become available. I wish he was here to see and discuss them but he succumbed to cancer a decade ago.
I'm incredibly grateful to be able to see the things he witnessed.
Though untrained and unencumbered by notions of political correctness, my father shared the intransigent suspicion of authority, appreciation of the absurd and fierce independence of the people he recorded. They reflect each other clearly through the lens.
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