Papua: Once is never enough

Morgan Harrington ,  Contributor ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 03/12/2009 1:39 PM  |  Arts & Design

Titles like Giggles Beneath Umbrella and Beautiful Shy Yali Girl reflect artist Elizabeth Menzies' genuine, personal curiosity for the every day of Papua, the subject of her latest photography exhibition and accompanying book.

"A lot of people think that you can go to Papua once - like that would be enough," says Menzies, who has traveled to the Indonesian half of the island 14 times since 2000. The images in the Papua collection were selected from a personal collection of more than 10,000 images taken from Merauke to Sorong and everywhere in between over the past nine years.

"I just, I think that, being an artist, I was really attracted to the colors, the designs the fabrics - everything, how they do and make things, their whole way of life," Menzies says.

A great deal of patience and perseverance was needed to capture the striking, boldly colored images in this collection. Menzies traversed Papua's infamously rugged terrain in missionary airplanes, wooden canoes and, mostly, on foot.

She walked for 10 days to capture Guitars, which shows two men carrying stringed instruments as big as park benches.

Menzies often found herself in situations where it was impossible to go unnoticed, such as when she climbed high atop the canopy of remote jungles to visit the tree houses of the Korowai tribe.

"I was the first foreigner ever to go there and, especially as a woman, on her own, they were like, *what are you doing here!'"

Menzies met with similar reactions from the remote Yali tribe in 2000. "They crowd around you, they crowd around the tent waiting for you to come out in the morning, you try to go to the bathroom in the bush and they follow you, so you have to shoo them away. They were really curious about everything."

Personal curiosities aside, the divide sometimes made it hard for Menzies to do what she came to do. "There was a problem trying to get a natural observation because they stare at you, or they turn when you start to take their photo and they pose," she explains.

"But eventually they just kind of forgot I was there and just went on with their daily life and then I was able to snap the pictures."

The divide has not always been so wide though, and, over the years, Menzies has forged unlikely friendships across the cultural barrier. "Some of the villagers I now know very well, some of these people are very good, close friends," she says. This is easy to see in the intimate portrait of Telly Wenda in the Grass, as the young, colorfully painted man greets the observer not as a neutral, unseen face though a lens, but rather with familiarity and warmth. Other subjects were clearly delighted to have their photo taken, greeting the camera with broad grins and a proud stance.

Menzies acknowledges her position as strictly that of an observer. "I am not an anthropologist, I am not a political analyst or anything like that, I'm just a person who takes photos of things that I like," she says modestly. "But I can see for myself that things are changing *in Papua*." Her desire to document these changes is in part the motivation behind the exhibit. "I realized that I just had to start recording these people properly because time is fading for them," she says.

"Just like everywhere change is happening, and it's happening very quickly."

Menzies' imagery conveys some of these changes lucidly. Parrot feathers and Shades shows a man dressed entirely in traditional, organic materials, save for a pair of plastic sunglasses.

She sees the changes happening in Papua as akin to those that faced indigenous populations in her native Canada. "I think some of the problems that faced Papua are the same problems that faced other parts of the world when they were developing."

The big issue, she says, is negotiating how to integrate into the modern world in a way that enables them to preserve the culture.

"There is a lot of pressure coming from the Indonesian government for them to stop wearing their kotekas *penis gourds*. But this is what they have been wearing for 40,000 years. I question when someone else comes into your place and says *you shouldn't do this' when it's your culture and your tradition," she says.

The exhibit itself, she says, came about quite organically. "I didn't go there saying, *I'm going to go and take these pictures and have an exhibition' - it wasn't like that at all." After numerous trips, she had accumulated a vast collection of photographs and so decided to approach Didier Hamel, the curator of Kemang's Duta Fine Arts Foundation, to discuss showing the public her view of Papua.

"He took one look and said, *all right, let's do a book too!' It happened all in one day," she recalls excitedly. Although this is the first exhibit of her photographs from the region, as a member of the Indonesian Heritage Society, Menzies has given lectures on tribal groups in Papua, including the Yali people.

"To stand in the middle of the primal rainforest is an experience everyone should have - it is unbelievable!" she says. It is this desire to share her remarkable experiences, coupled with a concern for the region, which gave birth to Papua. "I'm really worried because I know the rainforest has been mostly cut down in Sumatra and now in Kalimantan and Papua has the second largest rainforest in the world, next to the Amazon and it is still very pristine and very beautiful. It's phenomenal."

Whatever happens, Menzies' captivating, large-scale prints, will forever exist as documents of one of the most diverse places left on earth.

Papua

Elizabeth Menzies
Photography Exhibition and book
Duta Fine Arts Foundation
Jl. Kemang Utara 55A
Until March 21, 2009
info@dutafinearts.com

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