Gardens of War

Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age

by Robert Gardner and Karl G. Heider

Andre Deutsch, 1969, [First Edition], colour and black and white photographic plates throughout, large hardcover with illustrated boards

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners (see photographs)

“This is a book for those who enjoy looking, through the eyes of others and the mediation of the still camera, at scenes that they themselves are most unlikely ever to see.  It is unique.  Never before has such a diverse group, with such diverse interests and skills, on a complex and lengthy expedition into primitive territory, taken so many pictures that it became possible to select from among thousands a set of pictures which fit together so well that the identity of the individual photographer is almost obscured. 
The book’s essays provide background information which could only have been obtained by anthropologists working carefully and soberly to explore the intricacies of the Dani culture.  They serve as notes to some of the less easily comprehended pictures.  But essentially this is a visual book, a record of what any Western reader might have seen, had he a trained eye, if he had been set down suddenly among the Dani.”