Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, (Peabody Museum Collections Series) 1st Edition by Kevin Bubriski (Author), Michael Rockefeller (Photographer), Robert Gardner (Foreword)(Peabody Museum Press)

Softcover with flaps, 88 Pages, 83 B/W photographs,1- Page bibliography, Notes on the photographs, 1-Page biography, 12-Pages of text. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Gallery 12, Peabody Museum Of Archaeology and Ethnology, Nov 15 2006-Feb 28 2007. Published by Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University.

From April to August 1961, recent Harvard graduate Michael Clark Rockefeller was sound recordist and still photographer on a remarkable multidisciplinary expedition to the Dani people of highland New Guinea. In five short months he produced a wonderful body of work, including over 4,000 black-and-white negatives.

In this catalogue, photographer Kevin Bubriski explores Rockefeller's journey into the culture and community of the Dani and into rapport with the people whose lives he chronicled. The book reveals not only the young photographer's growing fluency in the language of the camera, but also the development of his personal way of seeing the Dani world around him. Although Rockefeller's life was cut tragically short on an expedition to the Asmat in the fall of 1961, his photographs are as vivid today as they were the moment they were made.

Featuring over 75 photographs, this beautiful volume is the first publication of a substantial body of Michael Rockefeller's visual legacy. Rockefeller's extraordinary photographs reveal both the resilient spirit of the Dani people and the anthropological and aesthetic eye of a young man full of promise. In a Foreword, Robert Gardner provides a personal recollection of Michael Rockefeller's experience in the New Guinea highlands.


Wonderful B/W photos taken by Michael Rockefeller during a 6-month stay with the Dani People of Highland New Guinea in 1961. I'm usually a fan of tribal art, but since the Dani are more fighters than artists, there's no art on display here, so I'm a fan of these wonderful photos of Dani life and culture. Rockefeller does not flinch from the more unpleasant aspect of Dani life in 1961, such as the photos of young girls who have had their fingers cut off in a ritual to keep evil spirits away. The photos are mainly of the boys and men of the tribe, since women are mostly confined to household chores. Somewhat famously, during a second expedition in late 1961 to visit the Asmat people of West Papua, Rockefeller disappeared when his canoe capsized in the waters off the coast of Irian Jaya.