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"Picturesque New Guinea" by John William Lindt featuring his own photographs.

John William Lindt was an award winning German-born photographer resident in Australia. When Sir Peter Scratchley was appointed High Commissioner for the Protectorate of New Guinea, Lindt volunteered to join the expedition as official photographer. Sir Peter accepted the offer and Lindt boarded the Governor Blackall en route to New Guinea in 1885. He presented his work to the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London in 1886 and published this book a year later.

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years past, when perusing the account of exploring expeditions setting out for some country comparatively unknown, I always noticed with a pang of disappointment that, however carefully the scientific staff was chosen, it was, as a rule, considered sufficient to supply one of the members with a mahogany camera, lens, and chemicals to take pictures, the dealer furnishing these articles generally initiating the purchaser for a couple or three hours' time into the secrets and tricks of the "dark art," or when funds were too limited to purchase instruments, it was taken for granted that enough talent existed among the members to make rough sketches, which would afterwards be "worked up" for the purpose of illustrating perhaps a very important report.
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Featured February 2012