Circa 1940’s Ethnographic Photograph of New Guinea or Philippines Woman with Chest Tattoos

Circa 1940’s Photograph of New Guinea or possibly Philippines Tribal Woman with Tattoos on her chest. This region is known for the fierce headhunters.

Malay Archipelago was a region that still had some of the most gruesome Headhunters in the world up until around WWII and a little beyond.
This practice was a way of life and the warring tribes collected the heads as trophies.
Many books have been written on this and some photos have documented this time and warring tribes.
Here is a great example of he type of images to come out. This image, appears to have been printed in circa 1950’s, due to the paper type, a type of gloss photo paper, but the image is circa 1920’s.

The Woman is heavily tattooed on her chest.

A great image and not a recent image print. I have seen this image before, not super rare but not a lot out there.
The image has a small C on the lower right of the image.


Size: 5 x 7
Condition: fine with some bent corners from years in storage.

If you have any questions or if you need additional images, please feel free to email me.