BEN BOHANE

spent his first five years in photojournalism based in South and South East Asia covering the wars of Cambodia, Burma and Afghanistan. He got the first interview with opium warlord General Khun Sa in ’91 and in ’92 was reportedly the first foreign traveler to go overland from Kabul to Moscow in 80 years.

In ’94, Ben returned to Australia and began covering the much under-reported Pacific region. He has spent the past 12 years specializing in “Conflict and Kastom” throughout Melanesia and black Australia. While covering every major conflict in the South Pacific – East Timor, West Papua, Moluccu, PNG, Solomon Islands, Bougainville, Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia, he traveled and lived with a variety of tribal and rebel groups and was thereby able to secure the first pictures of BRA leader Francis Ona in Bougainville and the only interview and pictures of Guadalcanal warlord Harold Keke before he surrendered to Australian troops.

He has perhaps the largest contemporary photo archive of the South Pacific in the world. His photographs are collected by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Australian War Memorial.

His work has appeared in TIME, NEWSWEEK, THE GUARDIAN (UK), GEO, ROLLING STONE and many more. Ben also shoots video and has done news stories and documentaries that have been shown on ABC & SBS Australia, BBC, ARD (Germany) and NHK (Japan).

In 2003 he published “Follow the Morning Star” documenting the forgotten struggle for independence in West Papua and is currently working on a book and retrospective exhibition entitled “BLACKFELLA ARMIES – Spirit and War in the Southwest Pacific.

Ben lives in Port Vila, Vanuatu where he continues to specialize in Australasia and the Pacific.

bbohane@netspace.net.au