Island of New Guinea, circa 1885
by Richard Parkinson

The German (though born in Denmark) explorer, trader and ethnologist Richard Parkinson spent over thirty years in the Bismarck archipelago (part of Papua New Guinea) working with, photographing and writing about the native peoples. This late 19th century photograph, of a group of Papuan youth, is just one of many of Parkinson’s works that exemplified his exceptional ability to capture the culture and sense of a people that were little known to the Western world at the time.