2010 Robert Gardner Photography Fellow
Over the past six years, Dupont has traveled to Papua New Guinea, photographically documenting its changing face and the powerful impact of globalization on the fabric of its traditional Melanesian society. Guns and Arrows, the proposed project, will continue this work. From the recasting of tribal society into an urban proletariat and the effects of violence and lawlessness in Port Moresby to the westernization of traditional society in the Highlands, it will be an in-depth study of cultural erosion as well as a celebration of an ancient people. He plans to use 35mm, 6x6, panoramic, and Polaroid formats for documentary street photography, landscapes, and portraiture; weaving single images, contact sheets, composites, and video grabs into multiple forms: a traditional exhibition at the Peabody Museum, a book with the Peabody Museum Press, and an interactive web presentation.
“I think these modern approaches are needed to fully exploit photography’s still-untapped power to move, motivate, and change the world,” says Dupont. The project will be “a reflection and a meditation on a unique place, and it may also be seen as a warning for other, seemingly more ‘secure’ cultures.”
Prof. William L. Fash, William and Muriel Seabury Howells Director of the Peabody Museum, noted that Dupont’s work echoes that of famed photographer-filmmaker Robert Gardner, who funds the Fellowship. “Robert Gardner shot his most provocative film ‘Dead Birds’ about the Dani people and their then-traditional hunter-gatherer culture in New Guinea, and it has inspired visual anthropologists ever since,” he said. “Stephen Dupont’s courageous portraits of the people of Papua New Guinea share not only a geographical connection with Gardner’s work, but also a commitment to capturing scenes from within a culture, scenes that reveal truths about the culture and humankind.”
Stephen Dupont has produced photo essays from dozens of countries, including some of the world’s most dangerous regions: Afghanistan, Angola, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, India, Iraq, Israel, Rwanda, Somalia, and Zaire. In April of 2008, he survived a suicide bombing while traveling with an opium poppy eradication team in Kabul. He has earned many prestigious photography prizes, including a Robert Capa Gold Medal citation from the Overseas Press Club of America; a Bayeux War Correspondent’s Prize; and first places in the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, the Australian Walkleys, and Leica/CCP Documentary Award. In 2007, he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanitarian Photography to continue Narcostan or The Perils of Freedom, a multi-media project documenting the effects of the drug trafficking in Afghanistan.
Dupont has held major exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Canberra, Tokyo, and Shanghai, and at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, China’s Ping Yao and Holland’s Noorderlicht festivals.
Dupont’s handmade photographic artist books and portfolios are in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Australian War Memorial, The New York Public Library, Berlin and Munich National Art Libraries, Stanford University, Yale University, Boston Athenaeum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Joy of Giving Something, Inc.
Update:
As the Museum’s 2010 Robert Gardner Photography Fellow, Dupont returned to Papua New Guinea and explored the mountainous Highlands, the serpentine Sepik River and the dangerously gritty capital city, Port Moresby. His photographs and artist’s journals document tremendous social change caused by globalization, HIV-AIDS, migration, poverty, and new wealth.
In his travels across Papua New Guinea—located north of Australia, on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea —Dupont set up temporary outdoor studios and made innovative portrait photographs.
“I use white and black bed sheets to create an outdoor studio that not only captures my sitter but also allows me to reveal the audience gathering and the environment around the sheet," says Dupont. "You feel as if you are on the streets of Mt. Hagen or in a Sepik village."
Dupont's portraits, landscapes, and diaries are a journey through Papua New Guinea's villages, cities, mines, valleys, and traditional tribal ceremonies.
To see Stephen Dupont's related exhibition at the PMAE, please visit Stephen Dupont: Papua New Guinea Portraits and Diaries.
To see Stephen Dupont's related publication, please visit Piksa Niugini: Portraits and Diaries.
To see more of Stephen Dupont's work, please visit his website.