Stephen Dupont

Gardner Photography Fellow, 2010

Following an international search, the Gardner Fellowship committee awarded the Fellowship to Stephen Dupont, a prize-winning Australian photographer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Time, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Dupont will be working on a project entitled Guns and Arrows: The Detribalization of Papua New Guinea.

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.

	Polaroid portrait of raskol ("criminal" in Tok Pison) Samson Maipe inside the Kips Kaboni (Red Devils) safe house in Kaugare Settlement, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 2004. Copyright Stephen Dupont.
	Asoro Mudman from the Mando Tribe, Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. 2004. Copyright Stephen Dupont.
	Children playing in the garbage dump at Baruni in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 2009. Copyright Stephen Dupont.
	Stephen Dupont. Photo by Brendan Beirne.