A Papuan Photographic Encounter: Lord Moyne’s and Lady Broughton’s visit to Asmat 1929-1936

Professor Nick Stanley

Thursday, 18 April 5:30pm – 7:00pm

HJ Braunholtz at the British Museum suggested to Lord Moyne in the late 1920s that a good place to visit on his Pacific adventures would be a blank spot on the ethnographic map, the territory of the Asmat of South Papua. The area (part of the Indonesian provinces) was little known because it was logistically very difficult to visit but Lord Moyne had his own ocean going ship and a crew that included professional photographers, zoologists and botanists. The record of the three visits is told in Moyne’s illustrated travelogue Walkabout: a journey between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. But more extensive photographic archives have subsequently filled out the picture of these encounters and raised new issues about the conditions under which these meetings took place.

This is the last opportunity to see the related photo exhibition in the meeting room!

Admission: free

No pre-booking required.