Darkness to Dawn

Photographs by John Lewis

Cleansing This woman was caught on wash day in the province's north

For 13 years, the Pacific Island of Bougainville slipped below the radar. Home to a violent secessionist movement, Papua New Guinea's easternmost province was blockaded and many of its 200,000 inhabitants forced into a holding pattern as peace talks stalled. Australian photographer Jon Lewis has been just as patient. Some of his best images—the backpacker with his Christmas tree on Bondi Beach or the Australian soldier standing in a burned-out East Timor hospital beneath a painting of Jesus—have appeared like rafts of humanity in the wash of world events. So when the Bougainville Peace Agreement was passed in 2002, who better...

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