Overview

In 1977 an abiding desire to photograph Old World peoples and cultures offered 23-year-old Victoria Ginn an escape from the wintery city of Melbourne, Australia, leading her by whatever means on offer (including accompanying homicidal maniacs gone troppo) into the remote, jungle swathed Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Here, in a hidden valley yet to fall victim to Christian missionaries hell-bent on ensnaring the souls of its Stone Age occupants, Victoria met and photographed a People whose ancient culture included forest magicians, sorcerers, dandies, bachelor-cult leaders … and who were – in the author's words – 'living archetypes whose pure jungle spirit remained connected to the very birth of humankind's spiritual consciousness'. A quirkily spiritual/psychological/poetic text, intended as a mirror to the photographs, makes this culturally historic portrait identifiably relevant NOW! AUTHOR: A self-taught photographic artist, Victoria Ginn has always embraced the individual and individuality as the purveyor of the inner 'invisible' – the Self, as symbol and archetype. Utilizing natural or found light, her creative focus evolved from black/white portraiture to encompass the intertwined contexts of landscape and culture. In her photographic essays done from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, Victoria explored the South Pacific islands, Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, Central Asia and Southern Europe to document art-performance-religious expressions of these regions. Her work has been published worldwide, and her major essay, The Spirited Earth - Dance, Myth and Ritual from South Asia to the South Pacific, was published by leading fine-art publisher Rizzoli International, New York. Victoria was born of the artist Ellinore Ginn in the house of her grandmother, renowned opera singer and teacher Anna Ginn, in Wellington. She now resides in a restored 1890s former hotel in South Taranaki, New Zealand. SELLING POINTS: . Unguarded photos of Papua New Guinea in the 1970s . Internationally published and exhibited author . Victoria's work is held by Auckland City Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Te Papa Tongarewa, as well as in various overseas public and private collections

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