Between the Tides

Featuring hundreds of original, color photographs, this fascinating study of New Guinea chronicles the rituals and daily life of this remote and culturally rich region.

Between the Tides offers a compelling mix of New Guinean storytelling, history, natural history, politics, and culture. David Pickell brings warmth and intelligence to his subject, and Kal Muller's photographs are surprising and evocative. Together, author and photographer show how an isolated, nomadic past meets a worldly, urban future, history confronts superstition, and a false and imposed sense of shame yields to a new, and still fragile, pride.

Their journey took them from the dusty New Guinea frontier town of Timika to tiny Lakahia island, along two hundred miles of twisting mangrove creeks and the relentlessly uncooperative Arafura sea. What they found was a culture facing the delicate, sometimes humorous, occasionally painful, and always interesting process of change.