Description

Susan Meiselas – Encounters with the Dani
Publisher: Steidl, 2003
Hardcover, 176 pages
Size: 27.7×21.1cm
New

In this body of work, acclaimed photographer Susan Meiselas pieces together verbal and visual traces of encounters with the Dani–an indigenous people of the West Papuan highlands–from the nearly six decades since their “discovery” by the West. In this subjective, fragmentary history, Meiselas draws from the experiences of missionaries, colonists, anthropologists and modern-day ecotourists, all of whom have come to the Dani’s Baliem Valley and transformed the conditions under which they live. The ambiguous relations between power and representation–whether in the form of Dutch colonial patrol notes from the 1930s, the sensationalized media accounts of the survivors of a downed U.S. army plane in “Shangri-La” from the 1940s or a tourist’s snapshots from the 1990s–become visible in Meiselas’s book, through both the contradictions and unexpected continuities of the gathered materials.