Ben Bohane's wars

Over at EyeContact I've continued my series about Pacific Islands art with a review of Ben Bohane's book The Black Islands. Bohane is an Australian-born photojournalist who lives in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, and has spent twenty-two years touring the battlefields and kava bowls of Melanesia, a region that extends, in his estimation, all the way from East Timor to Fiji, and includes swathes of continental Australia as well as thousands of islands.

The imminent release of the Chilcot report has focused the world's attention on imperialist military adventures in the Middle East, but Ben Bohane's images reminds me of the conflicts that have glowed for years, and in some cases decades, in the Pacific.

[Posted by Scott Hamilton]