Photos of Portraits of West-Papua, West-Papua

The people of West-Papua are friendly and happy to have their photo taken, men, women and children; they are proud of their culture and certainly not camera shy. In the highlands the Dani people often grease their faces and bodies with pig fat and soot, for warmth and may wear ornamentation like shell necklaces, string hair nets and sometimes feathers from birds of paradise.

The faces of the interior are mainly ethnic Papuan tribes, while on the coast there a mixture of Papuans, Melanesians and Austronesian groups, including Indonesians; a great deal of intermarriage has taken place in the coastal regions, where migrants have also settled, a result of Indonesia's "Transmigrasi" policy.