The power of pictures: Learning-by-looking at Papua in illustrated newspapers and magazines

Illustrated newspapers and magazines at the end of the 19th and early in the 20th century promoted economic opportunities in gold mining, planting, tourism and trading in the Australian Territory of Papua and visually suggested it was a potentially prosperous tropical frontier of costumed dancers, ex-cannibals, mission converts and eager labourers. The widespread dissemination of pictorial material in this era allowed Australians to be relatively well informed about Papua and learning-by-looking at daily, weekly and monthly publications liberally illustrated with photographs meant existing colonial, racist and hegemonic attitudes were reinforced and new interest generated in Australia’s sub-regional empire in the island