I think precisely the type of studio Irving Penn employed, where subjects are photographed in limbo, using a good camera & sealing prints in clear plastic, should be set up all through New Guinea. Its primary virtue would be as counterforce to radio.

It is one of the ironies of change in New Guinea that the introduction of the camera, though traumatic & disruptive of tribal life, must now be encouraged to offset the even greater trauma & disruption caused by radio. Human sensory balance must now be sought in terms of media balance.

A photograph moves us toward the isolated moment. It arrests time. It exists in pure space. It emphasizes individuality, private identity, and confers an element of permanence on that image. In many ways, it's the exact opposite of radio.

Such studios could easily become self-supporting, providing indigenous employment. Interest is already there.

We used up a great quantity of film during a six-week stay in Mintima, a Chimbu village in the Central Highlands. It became widely known we would take anyone's photograph, free, and there was always a crowd waiting. Many walked considerable distances. I recall a policeman who walked fifteen miles only to encounter rain, so he returned the next day, walking a total of sixty miles for one picture.

A photographic portrait, when new & privately possessed, promotes identity, individualism: it offers opportunities for self-recognition, self-study. It provides the extra sensation of objectivizing the self. It makes that self more real, more dramatic. For the subject, it's no longer enough to be: now he knows he is. He is conscious of himself.

Until man becomes conscious of his personal appearance & his private identity, there is little self-expression.

Sartre, in The Words, speaks of his mother: "Anne Marie, the younger daughter, spent her childhood on a chair. She was taught to be bored, to sit up straight, to sew. She was gifted: the family thought it distinguished to leave her gifts underdeveloped; she was radiant: they hid the fact from her ... beauty was beyond their means ... fifty years later, when turning the pages of a family album, Anne Marie realized that she had been beautiful."

In New Guinea, subjects who understood what a camera was & chose to pose before it generally faced the camera directly. But a few of the elders offered their profiles. I recall one elderly man, dressed as a warrior, who turned to one side & began to shout toward the horizon. I had the feeling this posture derived from some ancient battlefield.

One day at a marriage ceremony, we offered to photograph the bridal couple. The groom immediately posed with a male friend. We re-posed him with his pregnant bride & year-old child. Some weeks later we visited their home & saw this photograph carefully pinned up.

Actually, the incident was infinitely more complicated than this brief account indicates. It was instantly obvious from the behavior of everyone present that the picture he had requested would have been routine, whereas the picture we took was anything but routine. It was as if we had photographed, in our society, the groom kissing the best man. All the power & prestige of the camera had been used in direct conflict with one of the deepest cultural values of this Highland New Guinea society.

If I were a missionary, dedicated to promoting & preserving the Christian family, I would buy the biggest camera I could find, photograph all wedding couples & supply each with a large print, elaborately framed.

In our own culture, the sanctity & reality of marriage was declared as much in wedding photographs as it was in written documents. I think the power of such pictures would be even greater in New Guinea.

Since I'm not a missionary, not dedicated to promoting alien values at the expense of indigenous ones, I offer this as an illustration & speculation, not as a recommendation.