The following photographs are a selection from Malcolm Kirk‘s collection documenting tribal body art of Papua New Guinea tribes. Once the former assistant of Irving Penn, Kirk took the photographs over 13 years of travel to the South Pacific. Tribesmen and women decorate themselves for social gatherings, the imagery does not necessarily have specific cultural meanings or messaging, but rather a free and creative form of individual expression.
The photographs were first exhibited in 1981, and then followed by a hardcover art book “Man as Art”, which Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis described as “one of the most beautiful books I have seen in my life.” We would have to agree!
