Karen Huntt and Michele Westmorland, of the Mytinger Project, have received Scott Pearlman Field Awards for Science and Exploration from the Explorers Club. Pearlman awards are given to professionals in media and the arts to support documentation of exploration and field research.
Westmorland also has been invited to speak at the 8th World Wilderness Congress, to be held in Anchorage, Alaska, this October. She will give her presentation, "On the Trail of Headhunters," during the Conservation Photography forum. The theme of this year's congress is Wilderness, Wildlands, and People: A Partnership for the Planet.
The Mytinger Project will recreate a four-year journey that was begun in 1926 by Caroline Mytinger and Margaret Warner to paint portraits of the indigenous peoples of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea before Western culture altered their ways of life. Photographers Westmorland and Huntt are scheduled to begin retracing Mytinger's trek in May and June of this year.