Ben Bohane knows where he stands in the pantheon of war photographers – on the shoulders of WWII giants Robert Capa and George Rodger, alongside Don McCullin, James Nachtwey, and close friend Tim Page whose 1988 autobiography inspired him to ditch Sydney’s music scene for the mountain rebel hideout.
36 years of photojournalism covering armed conflict in Asia and the Pacific Islands has left his own distinctive visual record. He’s proven through his vast body of work from Burma and Afghanistan to Bougainville and West Papua that the story of war can be told through a lens trained on the spirit world of combatants and the communities they defend.
20 years ago, he moved from Sydney to Port Vila, the heartland of archipelagic Melanesia, a region once described as ‘the greatest religious panorama on earth’. But are his methods of cultural and spiritual immersion still relevant? Is his focus on the spirit world even possible in war zones where a reporter’s storytelling kit – words and images – are so much part of the offensive weaponry of war, and non-combatants, including journalists, targeted on the battlefield?
Gods + Guns bears witness to a broad sweep of our recent history, while recalling moments that brought him closest to his subjects in unconventional theatres of war – trekking into the central highlands of West Papua to meet rebel leaders or his ‘hot landing’ on a Bougainville beach to report the civil war from the secessionists’ side. Or his capture of the awesome power of ritual at kastom ceremonies in villages far from their Melanesian capitals.
For the first time, this photojournalist’s journey through war and the spirit world is synthesised into a documentary film with its distinctive black-and-white palette. Determined to show us what war looks like from every angle – including the other side – Bohane’s work brings us insights into the ongoing cycles of war and peace in our region and beyond and what it may look like in the future.
Steve has 30 years’ experience in various roles: broadcast journalist, investigative reporter, multimedia producer and web publisher. He has spent 20 years teaching journalism and media production in various tertiary settings.
Like the subject of his documentary film – photojournalist Ben Bohane – Steve has reported war and conflict in the Pacific and Asia as a freelance radio producer (ABC) and between 2009 to 2013, as a self-published multimedia producer covering the history, politics, development, arts and culture of the Pacific Islands. His reporting experience and knowledge of the region led to fieldwork in Indonesia resulting in the scholarly book Journalism and Conflict in Indonesia: From Reporting Violence to Promoting Peace (2012).
In 2014-15, he managed a large-scale media development project in the Pacific Islands producing media and journalism courses for five South Pacific teaching institutions. The project’s creative multimedia content included short documentary films.
