Author(s): William C. Clarke

Pacific Islands | Secondhand

Secondhand.

The Maring people of Papua New Guinea had their first contact with a European just six years before geographer and anthropologist William C. Clarke arrived to spend a year living with them in 1964. By the 1990s, after years of storage in tropical climes, the photographs Clarke took in PNG had become fungus-ridden and faded. Computer technology was used to restore the photographs, a process that brought back not just visual images of tropical plants, red soil, and skin made shiny with oil, but the smell of moist earth and banana leaves singeing on hot rocks. Clarke was transported to a half-forgotten world, a world he brings back to life in Remembering PNG, in which he reflects on the moment captured in each image. Looking at his photographs after more than thirty years, Clarke says, "I felt again the warm, damp air, remembered struggling up the steep muddy tracks, heard the yodeling cries with which people communicated over long distances. Even the deliciously unique taste of pandanus sauce mixed with crisp young fern leaves came back to me." In the book, Clarke uses memory and imaginations, his observations from the field, and even poetry to create a narrative that is as rich and engaging as his superb images.

VG. Name on the half-title. Minor mark on the back cover.