Overview

High in the cliffs surrounding the Koke people of Papua New Guinea are galleries of their ancestors. Hung in chairs, overlooking the village. Mummies, preserved for the living to visit and celebrate. Since the 1950s, as European missionaries traveled through this region, the ritual of mummifying your dead was forbidden. The village elder, Gemtasu, wanted to change that. He did not want to be buried in the soil for no one to see. When his time came, he wanted his relatives to mummify him as he mummified his father. His time came, and expedition leader and photographer Ulla Lohmann was there to document it, honoring his wish to share his story with the world.