In 1969, anthropologist Edmund (“Ted”) Carpenter was hired by the Australian government to study the impact of electronic media upon the indigenous populations of Papua New Guinea. Carpenter, a pioneer of the field of new media theory along with his friend Marshall McLuhan, had just completed a decade leading the groundbreaking Visual Anthropology department at California State University at Northridge, training a generation of anthropology students in the use of music, film, radio and other electronic media. In Papua, he decided to visit remote communities in the Highlands and along the Sepik River, and to interact with them using cameras, film, sound recorders, mirrors and other apparatus, and to record their responses. Many of the people had never seen their own image or heard their own voices played back to them before. To help him document the project, Carpenter brought with him the best photographer he knew, Adelaide de Menil. 

Adelaide was not only an accomplished commercial photographer for Vogue and other magazines, but also a licensed airplane pilot. She spent much of 1966 through 1968 traveling across coastal Alaska and British Columbia, at the invitation of Haida artist Bill Reid, photographing the remnants of tribal totems. Adelaide’s powerful images formed the basis of her book Out of the Silence, (1971), which remains an essential document of Pacific Northwest Coast art.

Having developed agriculture in the Highlands since at least 7000 B.C., Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, with over 800 spoken indigenous languages and roughly 1000 ethnic groups. For the project in Papua, Adelaide and Ted produced many hours of film footage, which is today in the Smithsonian Institution’s Anthropology Film Archive. These rare films document a way of life which had remained unchanged for centuries, but which was under pressure by the modern world. Carpenter ultimately felt that the results of their efforts would be harmful to the indigenous cultures, and he left the fieldwork incomplete. Instead, he wrote the book Oh What A Blow That Phantom Gave Me! (1973), his tour-de-force manifesto on human language as transformed by electronic media. The book anticipates the transformative computer-driven cultural milieu we inhabit today. 

Adelaide’s photography and cinematography provided the visual documentation, but she contributed an additional layer of skill and sensitivity to Ted’s work. Consistent with Adelaide’s photography from other locations, her approach in Papua was to create intimate human portraits of the indigenous villagers, not as distant objects, but as the beautiful individuals and families she encountered. Her subjects appear dignified, expressive, and joyful. As elsewhere, she paid especial attention to children. In this exhibition, we celebrate many of these images for the first time, as an independent body of work. 

Adelaide returned with Ted to Papua New Guinea once more in 1973, and a number of the portraits from the series date to this second visit. They were accompanied this time by photographer Herbert Loebel and his wife Alice, who had befriended Adelaide in 1960. By the mid-1970s, Papua was becoming something of a photographer’s haven, in part due to Irving Penn’s portable studio series he made in Papua in 1970, under the guidance of Ted Carpenter. 

Adelaide and Ted’s time together in Papua was the first of many fruitful collaborations, but it was also a love story: the two remained life partners from 1968 until Ted’s passing in 2011. Papua was simultaneously intense fieldwork and honeymoon. The stunning beauty in many of Adelaide’s portraits from Papua seem to radiate with compassionate love; they glow with life, warmth and tenderness. This is not mere anthropology, it is profound happiness and joy.

In honor of Edmund Carpenter’s centennial anniversary, we celebrate him and his wife Adelaide de Menil with this special presentation of photographs created because of their partnership. Reflecting the varied carving styles, attributes, and perceptions of beauty in depictions of women across the African continent, the sculptures in Tambaran Gallery's autumn show, Woman Sublime, will demonstrate a scintillating array of art styles.

The numerous forms of body scarification, facial expression, coiffure, jewelry, stance, and posture are all from the imagination of brilliant African male carvers, who created these images of women for their patrons to admire and employ within a variety of ritual contexts. Stemming from her love of Baule female figures, the exhibition was conceived years ago by Tambaran's founder and director, Maureen Zarember. Over the years, her appreciation widened to include female figures from throughout Africa. Tambaran's 1991 show and publication Woman Eternal, which was assembled with the assistance of friends and collaborators Alfred Sheinberg and Allen Wardwell, enhanced Zarember's collection, and this has been a resource for the present show. It will be on view from September 15 to October 29, 2022.

— Sean Mooney

Managing Director, Rock Foundation