...and one

for the birds

American photo-journalist James L. Anderson and his latest New Guinea book “Cannibal’ remind me of an enthusiastic young war cor respondent arriving at the front to find the war in stalemate. To justify the expense of his visit and to get his name to the public, he cables his editor a piece which escalates the story beyond the facts.

Cannibal is an interesting by product of the very successful pic ture book New Guinea produced last year by Anderson and Don Hogg (Reed). Photo-patrolling the Biami cannibal country of Western Papua for New Guinea, Anderson collected enough shots for his separate book.

Cannibal.

In fairness to Anderson, the great majority of the word-story in Cannibal is a faithful account of Biami cannibal life as I saw it in March-April, 1968. Anderson’s pic tures are good, as always. But it’s a pity a journalist was not asked to write the text.

Somehow, he got Patrol Officer Alan Johnson (my companion when 1 visited the area in 1968) posing while cleaning his revolver, and Acting Assistant District Commis sioner Yarnis Darris Wells going through the motions with a .303 rifle.

Unrealistically, these photos make them appear even more warlike than the cannibals they’re trying to civilise.

Authorities in Port Moresby and Canberra will be less than happy with the Johnson and Darris Wells’ pictures . . . revolvers, rifles and the like faded from the New Guinea patrolling scene some considerable time ago. Certainly, weapons are carried in Biami country, but the prominent display of weapons in Cannibal conjures up a high-impact story of life or death battle against the primitives.

Biami patrolling (350 miles north west of Port Moresby) is not nearly so dangerous as Cannibal suggests.

It’s true that unabashed cannibalism is still the natural way of life among the uncounted Biamis between the Strickland River and Mount Boasvi.

There have been numerous butcher raids by the tribes. In retaliation, the government sorties out regularly with military-type patrols to catch unwary Biamis, and to try to tell them that cannibalism must end.

Anderson’s generally laconic ac count of his patrol in Cannibal appears accurate enough. But his

camera has run riot, creating an imbalance between words and pic tures.

Sadly, he can’t spell the names of some of his heroes. And if one tries to find Biami country on the Ander son map, then one will be irretriev ably lost: the Biamis are not 700 miles from the Gulf of Papua, only 150.

In a nutshell: the Wild West trans ported (perhaps somewhat unwit tingly) into an interesting Papuan jungle community that needs far more sympathetic treatment that a .45 bullet and a Nikon camera.— John Ryan. (CANNIBAL. A. H. and A. W. Reed. $7.95.)