In 1997, Kal Muller showed David Pickell, his collaborator on previous books, photographs of the Kamoro people and their rituals. "The images were striking: young boys smeared with pigments and dressed in bright cloths and comic sunglasses; a great carved pole standing in front of the ritual house; a ritual leader slashing open a coffin-like container of sago starch; drummers berating the lizard-skin heads of their drums," said Pickell, prefaci