Printed to the photographer's specifications using Canson rag or Fuji Christal Archive (Matt or Gloss)
29.7 x 21 cms
11 3/4 x 8 1/4 ins
Special time-limited edition.
FPS49
This image is of an abandoned pilot ship on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. It was shipwrecked during a cyclone that hit the South Pacific in 2015. It forms part of a...
This image is of an abandoned pilot ship on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. It was shipwrecked during a cyclone that hit the South Pacific in 2015. It forms part of a collaborative project by photographer Jon Tonks and writer Christopher Lord called The Men Who Would Be King.
There are people in Vanuatu who say a messiah will one day arrive from a distant land. According to legend, he’ll bring the islands the prosperity they were denied by their former colonial rulers, Britain and France. Such beliefs are often labelled cargo cults – a term fraught with condescension, framing these spiritual movements as a religion constructed around the material wealth, the ‘cargo’, of the Western world. This work tells the stories of men from Europe and America who go the South Pacific, claiming or believing they are the fulfilment of this prophecy.
Jon Tonks is a British photographer whose work focuses on telling stories about lives shaped by history and geography – he has published two books that tell stories around the legacy of colonial history, often in the remote corners of the world.
His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian Saturday, The Sunday Times Magazine, the British Journal of Photography and more.
Now represented by the Photographers’ Gallery in London, his work has been exhibited internationally and held in a number of private collections, including The Hyman Collection of British photography, the Martin Parr Foundation and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Texas.