Once the world's richest open cut gold mine, nowadays Panguna Mine is a hole in the earth full of toxic substances and big enough for clouds to live in (see video above). Since its inception, it has been the carrot dangled by politicians and entrepreneurs to the people of Bougainville. The mine and its value to Bougainville is such a complex equation that I am only slowly coming to understand it after four years of working on my documentary project.
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Here is some aerial footage of Panguna Village and mine site taken on a recent trip to the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. I am an Australian photographer who has been working on a longterm photographic documentary project in Bougainville since 2014. See my blog for details about what I am doing there:
www.robvallender.com
The amazing music in this video is called "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Richter.