KATERINA TEAIWA (NARRATOR): Walk around this ancestor figure and look at the marks on the left shoulder, back, and thigh. They resemble the crocodile scars made on Sawos men during skin cutting initiation ceremonies. In this culture, crocodiles symbolize power.

WYLDA BAYRÓN: The scarification pattern starts at the nipples, and those are the eyes of the crocodile. And then it continues through the arms of the human to exemplify the paws of the crocodile and through the back and the legs.

My name is Wylda Bayrón, and I’m an indigenous Taíno and Arawak from Puerto Rico. And I am a cinematographer and photographer. I’ve been photographing New Guinea for the last decade.

So, New Guinea has a lot of secret societies, male secret societies, and as a female, there’s usually a boundary that you can’t cross. Thankfully, somehow in the middle Sepik in Yamok village, I was able to be entrusted to photograph a male skin cutting initiation.

This takes hours. They're being cut for a long time. There's a level of pain there that is... transcendental.

One of the most beautiful moments was the end. After hours of skin cutting and blood and flesh being opened and grunts and screams, they take out Tagasso oil with a feather and apply it all over their backs. And it’s a beautiful final moment of respite for the boys.

After that, they then go into the spirit house, which has smoke, and they put packed clay on their scars as well. And that starts the process of healing.

And you would not believe the difference of that young man to that man after 3 to 6 months in that initiation ceremony. It's just incredible. Almost like the smile fades and the innocence fades, and there is a real gravitas to the existing human at the end of that. It's very powerful.