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Caught on Camera: An Introduction to Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa

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Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies ((CIPCSS))

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Abstract

This chapter provides the state of the art and an introduction to some of the central theoretical and historiographic questions structuring the scholarship on photography within the African territories formerly under Portuguese colonial rule. It seeks to map out the existent sources and the different approaches to this topic, tracing the new directions within the critical literature as well as its most uncharted subjects. Organised as an overview, all the case studies under discussion comprise new research into archival material, and raise a host of questions for the future of this field of studies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Yvonne Vera, Thatha Camera – The Pursuit for Reality, Bulawayo: National Gallery of Zimbabwe, 1999, p. 3.

  2. 2.

    Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture” [1938], The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977, p. 133. Famously, Heidegger never mentioned photography in this foundational essay, but painting [das Bildung] instead. Yet, his concept of “world picture” has often been connected to photographic history and theory. See Michael Fried, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008, p. 561, and Diarmuid Costello, “The Question Concerning Photography”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 70, Issue 1, February 2012, pp. 101–113.

  3. 3.

    See Martin Jay, The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

  4. 4.

    Susan Sontag, On Photography, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1980, p. 7.

  5. 5.

    J. A. da Cunha Moraes, África Occidental: Álbum Photographico e Descriptivo, Lisboa: Edição David Corazzi, 1885–1888. For more, see António Pedro Vicente and Nicolas Monti, Cunha Moraes – Viagens em Angola, Coimbra: Casa Museu Bissaya Barreto, 1991; António Sena, História da Imagem Fotográfica em Portugal – 1839–1997, Porto: Porto Editora, 1998; Maria de Fátima Pereira, Casa Fotografia Moraes: A Modernidade Fotográfica na Obra dos Cunha Moraes, Porto: Universidade do Porto, 2001; Teresa Castro, “O esplendor dos Atlas: fotografia e cartografia visual do Império no limiar do século XX”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), O Império da Visão: Fotografia no Contexto Colonial (1860–1960), Lisboa: Edições 70, 2014, pp. 291–304; Bruna Triana, “Arquivos e Imagens (Pós)Coloniais: Contribuições Analíticas Sobre Duas Coleções Fotográficas”, Gesto Imagem e Som - Revista de Antropologia 2, 2017, pp. 37–60; Liliana Oliveira da Rocha and Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Fotografias de Angola do Século XIX: o ‘Álbum Fotográfico-Literário’ de Cunha Moraes”, Revista Tempos e Espaços em Educação, Vol. 12, No. 31, 2019, pp. 165–186.

  6. 6.

    Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, New York: Hill and Wang, 1981, p. 93.

  7. 7.

    Some foundational texts on colonial-era photography include David Green, “Classified Subjects. Photography and Anthropology: The Technology of Power”, Ten. 8, No. 19, 1984, pp. 30–37; Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987; David Bate, “Photography and the Colonial Vision”, Third Text, Spring 1990, pp. 53–60; Elizabeth Edwards, Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992; Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs, London: Reaktion Books, 1992; James Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire, London: Reaktion Books, 1997; Paul Landau and Deborah Kaspin (eds.), Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Specifically overviewing Africa, see Erin Haney, Exposures: Photography and Africa, London: Reaktion Books, 2010; Richard Vokes, Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives, New York: James Currey, 2012; Kylie Thomas and Louise Green (eds.), Photography in and out of Africa: Iterations with Difference, London: Routledge, 2018; Lorena Rizzo, Photography and History in Colonial Southern Africa: Shades of Empire, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2019; Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley (eds.), Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2019.

  8. 8.

    Zahid Chaudhary, Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

  9. 9.

    Nicholas Mirzoeff, Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality, Durham: Duke University Press: Duke 2011.

  10. 10.

    Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy (eds.), Empires of Vision: A Reader, Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

  11. 11.

    Lucie Ryzova, “The Image sans Orientalism”, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 8, 2015, p. 159.

  12. 12.

    Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Potential history: unlearning imperialism, London and New York: Verso, 2019.

  13. 13.

    See respectively, for instance, Christraud M. Geary, Images from Bamum: German colonial photography at the court of King Njoya, Cameroon, West Africa, 1902–1915, Washington: National Museum of African Art, 1988; Paolo Bertella Farnetti and Cecilia Dau Novelli, Images of colonialism and decolonisation in the Italian media, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017; Paul Bijl, Emerging Memory. Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural Remembrance, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015; and Susie Protschky, Images of the Tropics. Environment and Visual Culture in Colonial Indonesia, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2011.

  14. 14.

    See Jane Lydon, Eye contact: photographing Indigenous Australians, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005; Christopher Pinney, Nicolas Peterson and Nicholas Thomas (eds.), Photography’s Other Histories, Durham: Duke University Press; 2003; or, Christopher Morton and Darren Newbury (eds.), The African Photographic Archive: research and curatorial strategies, London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

  15. 15.

    Martin Jay, op. cit., 2014.

  16. 16.

    Among the earliest Goa-based practitioners, shortly after the medium was invented, were Manuel Xavier de Noronha, A. C. Gomes, A. X. Trindade and the Sousa & Paul photographic studio. See Vivek Meneses, “How colonial Goa used photography to create images of a democratic India”, Scroll, 26 February 2015; and Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Viagens entre a Índia e o arquivo: Goa em fotografias e exposições”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 319–342.

  17. 17.

    Alfredo de Lacerda Maia, “Governador de Timor: assassinado pelos indígenas, campanhas e iconografia”, Ocidente, No. 298, 1887, pp. 75–77; Alexandre Oliveira, “A imagem colonial de Timor: o álbum fotográfico do Governador Álvaro da Fontoura”, Rosa Maria Perez (ed.), Os Portugueses e o Oriente: História, itinerários, representações, Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2006, pp. 319–337; Ricardo Roque, Headhunting and Colonialism: Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire, 1870–1930, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; Steven Farram, “Looking at History: A consideration of two photographs; one from Darwin, one from Dili”, Circa: the Journal of Professional Historian, Issue 6, 2018, pp. 35–41; Lúcio Sousa, “A ‘grande revolta’ de Manufahi na revista Ilustração Portuguesa”, Vicente Paulino (ed.), Somos arquivos da memória: reflexões históricas e sócio-antropológicas sobre Timor Leste, Díli: Unidade de Produção e Disseminação do Conhecimento, 2018, pp. 133–152.

  18. 18.

    As José Eduardo Agualusa claims, “The art of photography has no traditions in Angola. Unlike Mozambique, to use a culturally and historically similar country as a reference, there is no school of photography in Angola. And yet, the medium started off to a promising start.” Kiluanje Liberdade and Inês Gonçalves, Agora Luanda, Coimbra: Almedina, 2007, p. 46. See also Albano Silva Pereira, Dia di Bai, Coimbra: Centro de Artes Visuais, 2003; and António Pinto Ribeiro, Réplica e rebeldia: artistas de Angola, Brasil, Cabo Verde e Moçambique, Lisboa: Instituto Camões, 2006. In addition to the referenced articles on Mozambique specifically, see also António Sopa, “Um país em imagens: O percurso da fotografia em Moçambique”, no publisher, no date; Eric Allina, “‘Fallacious Mirrors:’ Colonial Anxiety and Images of African Labor in Mozambique, ca. 1929”, History in Africa, Vol. 24, 1997, pp. 9–52; Jeanne Marie Penvenne, “Fotografando Lourenço Marques: A Cidade e os Seus Habitantes de 1960 a 1975”, Cláudia Castelo, Omar Ribeiro Thomaz, Sebastião Nascimento and Teresa Cruz e Silva (eds.), Os outros da colonização: ensaios sobre colonialismo tardio em Moçambique, Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2012, pp. 173–192; Drew Thompson, “Constructing a History of Independent Mozambique, 1974–1982: A Study in Photography”, Kronos, No. 39, 2013, pp. 158–184; Drew Thompson, “Visualising Frelimo’s Liberated Zones in Mozambique, 1962–1974”, Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies, Vol. 39, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 24–50; Drew Thompson, Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021; or, Leandro Antonio Guirro, Tempo, Papel e Tinta: imprensa e fotografia sobre Moçambique (1897–1937), Belo Horizonte: Dialética, 2021.

  19. 19.

    See Jennifer Bajorek, Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020.

  20. 20.

    See Jill R. Dias, “Photographic Sources for the History of Portuguese-Speaking Africa, 1870–1914,” History in Africa, Vol. 18, 1991 [1988], pp. 67–82; and by Beatrix Heintze, “In Pursuit of a Chameleon: Early Ethnographic Photography from Angola in Context”, History in Africa, 17, 1990, pp. 137–156; and “Die Konstruktion des angolanischen ‘Eingeborenen’ durch die Fotografie,” Ethnologie und Photographie, Issue 71, 1999, pp. 3–13.

  21. 21.

    Jill Dias, op. cit., p. 67.

  22. 22.

    See Ana Barradas, O Império a Preto e Branco, Lisboa: Dinossauro, 1998; Eric Gable, “Bad Copies: The Colonial Aesthetic and the Manjaco-Portuguese Encounter,” Paul Landau and Donald Kaspin (eds.), Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, pp. 294–319; Clara Carvalho, “Uma antropologia da imagem colonial: poder e figuração entre os manjaco da Guiné Bissau”, Tempo Brasileiro, 2004, pp. 225–250.

  23. 23.

    Nuno Porto (ed.), Angola a preto e branco: fotografia e ciência no Museu do Dundo, 1940–1970, Coimbra: Museu Antropológico, Universidade de Coimbra, 1999; See also Nuno Porto, “Picturing the Museum: Photography and the Work of Mediation in the Third Portuguese Empire”, Mary Bouquet (ed.), Academic Anthropology and the Museum: Back to the Future, New York: Berghahn Books, 2001, pp. 36–54; Nuno Porto, “Under the gaze of the ancestors: photographs and performance in colonial Angola”, Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (eds.), Photographs, Objects Histories: On the Materiality of Photographs, London; New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 113–131; Nuno Porto, “www.diamangdigital.net: memória, performance, colonialidade”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 487–496.

  24. 24.

    Leonor Pires Martins, Um Império de Papel – Imagens do Colonialismo Português na Imprensa Periódica Ilustrada (1875–1940), Lisboa: Edições 70, 2012.

  25. 25.

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014.

  26. 26.

    Portugal’s Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)-funded Research Project coordinated by Filipa Lowndes Vicente, Knowledge and Vision. Photography within the Portuguese Colonial Archive and Museum (1850–1950) (PTDC/HIS-HIS/112198/2009).

  27. 27.

    Marcus Vinicius de Oliveira, À sombra do colonialismo: Fotografia, circulação e projeto colonial português (1930–1951), São Paulo: Letra & Voz, 2021.

  28. 28.

    Drew Thompson, op. cit., 2021.

  29. 29.

    Inês Vieira Gomes, Fotografia e Império. Imagens da África Colonial Portuguesa entre 1875 e 1940. PhD Thesis (ICS-ULisboa, 2022); Alba Martin Luque, Disparando imágenes: una historia visual de la guerra de descolonización del África portuguesa contada desde el caso de estudio del Frente de Liberación de Mozambique (FRELIMO), 1955–1975. PhD Thesis (European University Institute, 2022).

  30. 30.

    See, e.g. Drew Thompson, Paolo Israel and Rui Assubuji (eds.), “The Liberation Script in Mozambican History,” Kronos Vol. 39, Winter 2014; Teresa Mendes Flores and Cecilia Järdemar (eds.), “Vistas Imperiais: Visualidades coloniais e processos de descolonização”, Vista, Journal of Visual Culture, No. 5, 2019.

  31. 31.

    Paulo Azevedo, Joseph e Maurice Lazarus: photographos pioneiros de Moçambique, 1899–1908, Maputo: Arquivo Fotográfico Moçambicano, 2014, and Photographos – Pioneiros de Moçambique, Lisboa: Glaciar, 2020.

  32. 32.

    See, for instance, Mădălina Florescu, “Post-abolition Angola in a post-colonial mission archive: a preliminary contextualization of a photograph from the Spiritans’s mission in Malange, northern Angola, 1904”, Social Dynamics, Vol. 40, Issue I, 2014, pp. 66–84; and João Figueiredo, “Heimlich/unheimlich: Outlining the Influence of Spiritan Worldviews in the Work of Angolan Pioneer Photographers José Moraes and Elmano Costa”, Social Sciences and Missions, Vol. 30, Issue 3–4, 2017, pp. 366–387.

  33. 33.

    Clara Carvalho, “O olhar colonial: fotografia e antropologia no Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa”, A Persistência da História: Passado e Contemporaneidade em África, Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2004, pp. 119–147; Sandra Xavier, “Numa estreita vereda aberta na floresta; botânica, iconografia, território”, Paulo Amaral, Alexandre Ramires, Fátima Sales and Helena Freitas (eds.), Missão Botânica: Angola 1927–1937, Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2005, pp. 77–96; Cristina Nogueira da Silva, “Fotografando o mundo colonial africano. Moçambique, 1929”, Varia História, Belo Horizonte, vol. 25, n. 41, jan/jun 2009, pp. 107–128; Katie McKeown, “‘A once & future Eden’. Gorongosa National Park & the making of Mozambique”, Richard Vokes (ed.), Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives, Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2012, pp. 166–186; Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “A fotografia na obra de Mendes Correia (1888–1960): modos de representar, diferenciar e classificar da “antropologia colonial”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 45–66; Cristina Nogueira da Silva, “O registo da diferença: fotografia e classificação jurídica das populações coloniais (Moçambique, primeira metade do século XX)”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 67–84; Cláudia Castelo and Catarina Mateus, “Etnografia Angolana” (1935–1939): histórias da coleção fotográfica de Elmano Cunha e Costa”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 85–106; Ana Cristina Roque, “Missão Antropológica de Moçambique (1936–1956)”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 107–115; Ana Cristina Martins, “Fotografias da Missão Antropológica e Etnológica da Guiné (1946–1947): entre a forma e o conteúdo”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 117–139; Bárbara Direito, “Caçados e caçadores nas fotografias do arquivo da Companhia de Moçambique”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 141–155; Augusto Nascimento, “Olhar as mudanças sociais em São Tomé e Príncipe através das fotografias”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 157–167; Nuno Borges de Araújo, “Fotografia científica em Angola no último quartel do século XIX: o caso do naturalista José de Anchieta”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 171–181; António Carmo Gouveia, “Do nome à imagem: percursos de uma planta tropical de São Tomé numa fotografia do final do século XIX”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 183–194; Paulo Jorge Fernandes, “A fotografia e a edificação do Estado Colonial: a missão de Mariano de Carvalho à província de Moçambique em 1890”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 195–210; Teresa Mendes Flores, “A preto e branco: folheando os relatórios médicos da Diamang”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), O Império da Visão, 2014, pp. 223–242; Mário Machaqueiro, “Imagens de muçulmanos em tempos de sedução colonial”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 259–273; Amélia Frazão-Moreira, “Ethnobiological research and ethnographic challenges in the ‘ecological era’”, Etnográfica, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2015, pp. 605–624; Teresa Mendes Flores, “As fotografias da expedição portuguesa ao Muatiânvuo – 1884/88”, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, No. 47, 2017, pp. 53–77; António Fernando Cascais and Mariana Gomes da Costa, “Corpos colonizados: Recursos com paisagem em fundo. Uma agenda de pesquisa”, Vista, No. 5, 2019, pp. 101–126; Lorena Travassos, “Missões antropológicas de São Tomé (1954) e Angola (1955): Caminhos para a descolonização da fotografia colonial”, Estudos Históricos, Vol. 34, No. 72, 2021, pp. 81–106.

  34. 34.

    See, e.g. Maria do Carmo Séren, A Porta do meio: a Exposição Colonial de 1934: Fotografias da casa Alvão, Porto: Centro Português de Fotografia, 2001; Leonor Pires Martins, “Imaginar o Império através da revista ilustrada O Occidente (1878–1915)”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 277–289; Rita Carvalho, “Fotografia e ilustração na literatura colonial do Estado Novo”, Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 305–317; Nadia Vargaftig, “Para ver, para vender: o papel da imagem fotográfica nas exposições coloniais portuguesas (1929–1940)”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 343–352; Inês Vieira Gomes, “Imagens de Angola e Moçambique na metrópole. Exposições de fotografia no Palácio Foz (1938–1960)”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 353–365; Maria do Carmo Piçarra, “Cinema Império: contributos para uma genealogia da imagem colonial”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 367–384; Filomena Serra, “Visões do Império: a 1ª Exposição Colonial Portuguesa de 1934 e alguns dos seus álbuns”, Revista Brasileira de História da Mídia, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2016, pp. 45–59; Afonso Dias Ramos, “Photography and Propaganda in the Fall of the Portuguese Empire: Volkmar Wentzel’s Assignments for National Geographic Magazine”, José Luis Garcia, Chandrika Kaul, Filipa Subtil and Alexandra Santos (eds.), Media and Portuguese Empire, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 253–274; Teresa Matos Pereira, “Fotografia e propaganda colonial. Notas sobre uma união de interesses na primeira década do Estado Novo”, Comunicação Pública, Vol. 12, No. 23, 2017 [online]; Filomena Serra (ed.), Printed Photography and Propaganda in the Portuguese Estado Novo, Gijón: Editorial Muga, 2021.

  35. 35.

    See Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, Livros Brancos Almas Negras. A “Missão Civilizadora” do Colonialismo Português (c.1870–1930), Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2009; Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, “As provas da “civilização”: fotografia, colonialismo e direitos humanos”, Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 387–398; Nuno Domingos, “O feitiço das imagens: trabalhadores industriais modernos na paisagem colonial em Moçambique”, Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 243–258; and Jeremy Ball, Angola’s Colossal Lie. Forced Labor on a Sugar Plantation, 1913–1977, Brill: Leiden, 2015.

  36. 36.

    See, e.g. Carlos Barradas, “Poder ver, poder saber. A fotografia nos meandros do colonialismo e pós-colonialismo. Arquivos da Memória: Antropologia”, Arte e Imagem, No. 5–6, 2009, pp. 59–79. Clara Carvalho, “‘Raça’, género e imagem colonial: representações de mulheres nos arquivos fotográficos”, José Machado, Clara Carvalho and Neusa Mendes de Gusmão (eds.), O visual e o quotidiano, Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2008, pp. 145–174; Selma Pantoja, “Women’s Work in the Fairs and Markets of Luanda”, Clara Sarmento (ed.), Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Theatre of Shadows, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008, pp. 81–93; Carlos Barradas, “Descolonizando enunciados: a quem serve objectivamente a fotografia?”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 447–459; Júlia Garraio, “Perdidas na exposição? Desafiar o imaginário colonial português através de fotografias de mulheres Negras”, António Sousa Ribeiro and Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (eds.), Geometrias da memória: configurações pós-coloniais, Porto: Afrontamento, 2016, pp. 279–303; Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Black Women’s Bodies in the Portuguese Colonial Visual Archive (1900–1975)”, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, 30/31, 2017, pp. 16–67; Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inês Vieira Gomes, “Inequalities on trial: conflict, violence and dissent in the making of colonial Angola (1907–1920)”, Francisco Bethencourt (ed.), Inequality in the Portuguese-speaking World, Brighton; Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2018, pp. 217–242; Júlia Garraio, “Weiße Männer und schwarze Frauen in Fotos aus dem portugiesischen Kolonialkrieg. Über Skripte und die Unsichtbarkeit sexueller Gewalt als individuelle Erfahrung”, Gaby Zipfel, Regina Mühlhäuser and Kirsten Campbell (eds.), Vor aller Augen. Sexuelle Gewalt in bewaffneten Konflikten, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2021, pp. 535–543.

  37. 37.

    On the decolonization wars, see Paulo de Medeiros, “War Pics: Photographic Representations of the Colonial War”, Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 39, No. 2, Winter, 2002, pp. 91–106; Drew Thompson, “AIM, FOCUS, SHOOT: Photographic Narratives of War, Independence, and Imagination in Mozambique, 1950 to 1993”, PhD Thesis, University of Minnesota, 2013, and “Visualizing the Liberated Zones in Frelimo’s Mozambique, 1963–1974,” Social Dynamics: A Journal in African Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 2013, pp. 24–50; Afonso Dias Ramos, “Angola 61, O Horror das Imagens” and Catarina Laranjeiro, “Etnografia visual da Guerra Colonial. Luta de libertação na Guiné”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 397–432 and 435–446; Carlos Maurício, “Um longo degelo: a guerra colonial e a descolonização nos ecrãs portugueses (1974–1994). Um inventário”, Ler História 65, 2014, pp. 159–177; Ansgar Schaefer, “Imagens de A Guerra. Interacção entre os discursos visual e verbal na série de Joaquim Furtado”, Práticas da História 1, 2015, pp. 33–60; Maria José Lobo Antunes, “O que se vê e o que não pode ser visto: fotografia, violência e guerra”, Elsa Peralta, Bruno Góis and Joana Gonçalo Oliveira (eds.) Retornar: Traços de Memória do Fim do Império, Lisboa: Edições 70, 2017, pp. 213–224; Clara Pinto Roldão Caldeira, “O corpo nas imagens da guerra colonial portuguesa: subjetividades em análise”, Galáxia, No. 40, January–April 2019, pp. 17–40; Uliano Lucas, Revoluções: Guiné-Bissau, Angola e Portugal (1969-1974), Lisboa: Edições do Saguão, 2023.

  38. 38.

    Liliana Oliveira da Rocha and Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Fotografia colonial: materialidades e imaterialidades identitárias no contexto português”, Criar Educação, Vol. 7, No. 2, July/December 2018, np.

  39. 39.

    Santu Mofokeng, “The Black Photo Album”, Revue Noire, Anthology of African & Indian Ocean Photography, Paris: Revue Noire, 1999, p. 70.

  40. 40.

    The first daguerreotypes in Africa were made in Alexandria in November 1839, by Horace Vernet and his nephew Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet, during their Voyage en Orient (Paris: Challamel, 1843).

  41. 41.

    Olu Oguibe, “Photography and the Substance of the Image”, The Culture Game, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004, pp. 73–89.

  42. 42.

    Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 2.

  43. 43.

    Notable examples include Janet E. Buerger, French daguerreotypes, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 91; Gilbert Beaugé, “De l’apparence des caractères au caractère des apparences. Photographie et anthropologie: 1839–1912”, Le monde alpin et rhodanien. Revue régionale d’ethnologie, 1995, Vol. 23, pp. 81–144; Bates Lowry and Isabel Barrett Lowry, The Silver Canvas: Daguerreotype Masterpieces from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 1998, p. 110; Robert A. Sobieszek, Ghost in the Shell: Photography and the Human Soul, 1850–2000: Essays on Camera Portraiture, Los Angeles, Cambridge: LACMA, MIT Press, 1999, p. 107; Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002; Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, London: Laurence King, 2002, p. 355; George Ermakoff, O negro na fotografia brasileira do século XIX, Rio de Janeiro: Casa Editorial, 2004, p. 294; Erin Haney, Photography and Africa, London: Reaktion Books, 2010, p. 35; T. Jack Thompson, Light on Darkness? Missionary Photography of Africa, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2013, pp. 23–26; Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno (eds.), Humanitarian Photography: A History, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 18.

  44. 44.

    Allan Sekula, “The Traffic in Photographs”, Art Journal, Vol. 41, No. 1, Spring, 1981, p. 21. It has been noted by Deborah Poole, in turn, that this influential quote on the criminal other indicates the failure of photography criticism to reckon with the colonial world and racial ideologies, absent from the original analysis. Vision, Race, and Modernity: Visual Economy of the Andean Image World, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 130.

  45. 45.

    This misunderstanding dates back to South African critic Arthur D. Bensusan’s authoritative claim in his foundational history of photography (Silver images: history of photography in Africa, Cape Town: H. Timmins, 1966, p. 20), in a mix-up probably due to the mistranslation of the original caption in French, assuming the “born in” to mean “native of”, a semantic slip-up telling of a colonial world order.

  46. 46.

    In 1844, Thiésson exhibited his work in Paris, together with Bisson, Gros, Derussy and Thierry. See Georges Potonniée, Histoire de la découverte de la photographie, Paris: P. Montel, 1925.

  47. 47.

    See Michel Frizot, Nouvelle histoire de la photographie, Paris: Adam Biro, 1994, pp. 259–271; Emmanuel Garrigues, “Le savoir ethnographique et la photographie”, L’Ethnographie, No. 109, 1991, pp. 11–54; and Marcos Morel, “Cinco imagens e múltiplos olhares: ‘descobertas’ sobre os índios do Brasil e a fotografia do século XIX”, História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, Vol. 8, 2001, pp. 1039–1058.

  48. 48.

    Ernest Conduché, “La photographie au Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle”, La Lumière – Revue de Photographie, No. 16, 17 April 1858.

  49. 49.

    Idem. Serres lamented the absence of a museum of anthropology, claiming that botany and zoology had made an “extremely rapid” progress due to their collections. He proposed the creation of a “photographic museum of human races”, freeing anthropology from its speculative character since photography occupied “the positive part” of knowledge. The museum would, in fact, be founded with collections of photographs featuring the Brazilian couple, the African population of Lisbon and among other later additions, Eskimos.

  50. 50.

    Abbé Moigno, “Photographie, son histoire, ses procédés, sa théorie”, Revue scientifique et industrielle, September 1847, p. 363.

  51. 51.

    Another relevant example here was the Frenchman Blaise Bonnevide, who worked in Porto in 1860, before becoming a pioneer of colonial photography in Africa, opening the first studio in Senegal. See Patrice Garcia, Blaise Bonnevide, 1824–1906 & Félix Bonnevide, 1857–1935: photographes à la côte occidentale d’Afrique de 1869 à 1889, Meudon-la-Forêt: Patrice Garcia, 2015.

  52. 52.

    Cited in José-Augusto França, A Arte em Portugal no Século XIX, Lisboa: Livraria Bertrand, 1966, p. 286.

  53. 53.

    António Feliciano de Castilho, “Luz Pintora”, Revista Universal Lisbonense, IV, n. 27, 23 January 1845, pp. 329–330.

  54. 54.

    Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph”, Atlantic Monthly, June 1859, pp. 738–748. For a critical discussion of the racial implications of this turn of phrase, see Leigh Raiford, “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory”, History and Theory, Vol. 48, Issue 4, pp. 112–124.

  55. 55.

    Abbé Moigno, op. cit., p. 363.

  56. 56.

    L’Institut. Journal Universel des sciences et des sociétés savants en France et à l’étranger, No. 604, 23 July 1845, p. 267.

  57. 57.

    Étienne Serres, “Anthropologie comparée – Observations sur l’application de la photographie à l’étude des races humaines,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences, Vol. 21, Paris: Académie des Sciences, 1845, pp. 242–246.

  58. 58.

    Eliza Cook’s Journal, Vol. 3, London: John Owen Clarke, 1850, p. 95.

  59. 59.

    Tina M. Campt, Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe, Durham: Duke University Press, 2012, p. 33.

  60. 60.

    In 1865, invited by Emperor Pedro II, Agassiz travelled to Brazil to set up a human laboratory in Manaus, cataloguing “mixed-race” people and making daguerreotypes. Agassiz deemed slavery worse in Brazil than in the US because of “the less energetic and powerful race of the Portuguese and Brazilian […] compared to the Anglo-Saxon”, and thought that “the free blacks compared well in intelligence and activity with the Brazilians and Portuguese”, who gave the “singular spectacle of a high race receiving the impress of a lower one, of an educated class adopting the habits and sinking to the level of the savage.” Cited in Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, p. 287.

  61. 61.

    Eileen Kinsella, “‘Morally, Harvard Has No Grounds’: Inside the Explosive Lawsuit That Accuses the University of Profiting from Images of Slavery”, ArtNetNews, 28 March 2019; Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, “The Captive Photograph. Images seized from enslaved people are not private property to be owned, but ancestors to be cared for”, Boston Review, 23 September 2021.

  62. 62.

    Jane Anderson, “Anxieties of authorship in the colonial archive”, Cynthia Chris and David Gerstner (eds.), Media Authorship, New York: Taylor & Francis, 2013, pp. 229–246.

  63. 63.

    Christopher Webster, “Seeing the odalisque: aspects of the colonial gaze in South Africa, 1845–1975”, de Arte, Vol. 34, Issue 60, 1999, pp. 20–28.

  64. 64.

    Some of the pseudoscientific racist claims made by Serres, such as belly button height variance and flattened labia as marks of black inferiority, were to be pilloried within the scientific community. See Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin: reflections in natural history, Handsworth: Penguin, 1980.

  65. 65.

    Abbé Moigno, “Photographie, son histoire, ses procédés, sa théorie”, Revue scientifique et industrielle, September 1847, pp. 364.

  66. 66.

    Krista Thompson, “The Evidence of Things Not Photographed: Slavery and Historical Memory in the British West Indies”, Representations, Vol. 113, No. 1, Winter 2011, pp. 39–71.

  67. 67.

    Paulo César de Azevedo and Maurício Lissowsky (eds.), Escravos brasileiros do século XIX na fotografia de Christiano Jr, São Paulo: Ex Libris 1988, p. XXXI. Other photographers as Augusto Stahl, Rodolpho Lindemann, Alberto Henschel or Marc Ferrez also exported portraits of enslaved African types. See Margrit Prussat, “Icons of Slavery: Black Brazil in Nineteenth Century Photography and Image Art”, Ana Lucia Araujo (ed.), Living History: Encountering the Memory of the Heirs of Slavery, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, pp. 203–230.

  68. 68.

    Arlindo Manuel Caldeira, Escravos em Portugal – Das Origens ao Século XIX, Lisboa: Esfera dos Livros, 2017.

  69. 69.

    This misattribution is also traceable to A. D. Bensusan (p. 9), half a century ago, who claimed: “This may be the famous Native Queen Xai Xai in the province of Zavala [sic], as it was almost certainly an important dignitary who was worthy of a Daguerreotype in those days.” This ascription is nonsensical from an historical and geographical, let alone visual viewpoint, but, by ignoring the history laid out in this introduction, it is still unquestioningly replicated in authoritative books. See, for instance, “the first daguerreotype made in Southern Africa of Queen Xai Xai of Sofala.” Darren Newbury, “Photographic Histories and Practices in Southern Africa”, Gil Pasternak (ed.), The Handbook of Photography Studies, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, p. 428.

  70. 70.

    E.P. Thomson, The Making of the English Working Class, London: Victor Gollancz, 1963, p. 3.

  71. 71.

    Gilles Deleuze, “Intellectuals and power: A conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze”, Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980, pp. 205–217.

  72. 72.

    On recent debates around contemporary engagements with older photographs, see Érika Nimis and Marian Nur Goni, “Images à rebours: Relire les histoires officielles,” Cahiers d’études africaines 230, No. 2 (2018), pp. 283–300.

  73. 73.

    John Peffer, “How Do We Look?”, Kronos, vol. 46, n. 1, November 2020, p. 83.

  74. 74.

    Édouard Glissant, The Poetics of Relation, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997.

  75. 75.

    Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in two acts”, Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism, No. 26, 2008, p. 4.

  76. 76.

    Temi Odumosu, “The Crying Child: On Colonial Archives, Digitization, and Ethics of Care in the Cultural Commons”, Current Anthropology, Vol. 61, No. S22, October 2020, pp. 289–301.

  77. 77.

    Denise Ferreira da Silva, “Fractal Thinking”, aCCeSsions, No. 2, April 27, 2016. On the notion of “impure time”, see Georges Didi-Huberman, The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg’s History of Art, College Park: Penn State University Press, 2016. On the emotional afterlife of colonial photographs, see Wayne Modest, “Museums and the Emotional Afterlife of Colonial Photography”, Elizabeth Edwards and Sigrid Lien (eds.), Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs, London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 21–41.

  78. 78.

    Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Unbecoming Claims: Pedagogies of Refusal in Qualitative Research”, Qualitative Inquiry 20, No. 6, 2014, p. 812.

  79. 79.

    Gil Hochberg, Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future, Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.

  80. 80.

    See, e.g. Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the Native and the Making of European Identities, London: Leicester University Press, 2000.

  81. 81.

    An estimated 90 to 95 per cent of Africa’s cultural heritage is outside the continent. Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics, Paris: Ministère de la Culture, 2018.

  82. 82.

    See Joseph Deniker and Louis Laloy, “Les races exotiques à l’Exposition Universelle de 1889”, L’Anthropologie 1, 1890, pp. 513–546.

  83. 83.

    See Afonso Dias Ramos, “Imageless Angola – Photography and Political Violence in a Trasnational Age”, PhD Thesis, UCL, 2018. For a long view of visuality in the Portuguese empire, see Orte Krass (ed.), Visualizing Portuguese Power: The Political Use of Images in Portugal and its Overseas Empire (16th-18th Century), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

  84. 84.

    See Nélia Dias, “Photographier et mesurer: les portraits anthropologiques”, Romantisme 84, 1994, pp. 37–49. See also Photoquai: le monde regarde le monde: biennale des images du monde, Paris: Nicolas Chaudun, Musée du quai Branly, 2007.

  85. 85.

    See Frank Stephan Kohl, “Um “olhar europeu” em 2000 imagens: Alphons Stübel e sua coleção de fotografias da América do Sul”, Studium, No. 21, 2005, pp. 51–74.

  86. 86.

    See Serpa Pinto, How I Crossed Africa: from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, through Unknown Countries, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1881.

  87. 87.

    See Darlene Sadlier, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora: Seven Centuries of Literature and the Arts, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.

  88. 88.

    On the use of photography as a resource of diasporic subject and community formation, see Tina M. Campt, Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe, Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2012.

  89. 89.

    Erin Haney and Jürg Schneider, “Beyond the “African” Archive Paradigm”, Visual Anthropology, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2014, pp. 307–315.

  90. 90.

    See Sophie Berrebi, “Sailor Shirts and Photographs. A Research Diary.” Research Centre for Material Culture, 2018. Available on: https://www.materialculture.nl/en/open-space/sailor-shirts-and-photographs-research-diary (accessed July 15, 2019).

  91. 91.

    See, for instance, Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003; Elizabeth Edwards, “Photographs and the Sound of History”, Visual Anthropology Review 21, Nos. 1–2, 2006, pp. 27–46; Tina Campt, Listening to Images, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

  92. 92.

    The Photographic News, 10 October 1884, p. 648.

  93. 93.

    There was a long-running speculation that the earliest daguerreotype in Africa dated from 1843 and was made by the Portuguese doctor Clemente Joaquim Abranches Bizarro in Huíla, Angola, depicting Princess Babola. This claim, based on a supposed lithograph thereof, was debunked by Nuno Borges de Araújo in “Primeiros fotógrafos em Luanda”, 1 February 2007. Associação Portuguesa de Photographia. Blog available: http://apphotographia.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html (Accessed on 20 November 2017).

  94. 94.

    Alaistair Hazell, The Last Slave Market: Dr John Kirk and the End of Slavery in East Africa, London: Constable, 2011.

  95. 95.

    Shubi Lugemalila Ishemo, The Lower Zambezi Basin in Mozambique: A Study in Economy and Society, 1850–1920, Aldershot: Avebury, 1995.

  96. 96.

    Nuno Borges de Araújo, “Portugal”, John Hannavy (ed.), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, New York: Routledge Reference, 2008, pp. 1151–1154.

  97. 97.

    See Tanya Sheehan and Andres Zervigon (eds.), Photography and Its Origins, New York: Routledge, 2015.

  98. 98.

    Pamila Gupta, “Moving Still: Bicycles in Ranchhod Oza’s photographs of 1950s Stone Town (Zanzibar)”, Journal of African Cinemas, Vol. 12, Nos. 2–3, 2020, pp. 191–211; Meg Samuelson, “‘You’ll never forget what your camera remembers’: image-things and changing times in Capital Art Studio, Zanzibar”, Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2018, pp. 75–91.

  99. 99.

    Alfred Martin Duggan-Cronin, The Bantu Tribes of South Africa: Reproductions of Photographic Studies, 4 vols., Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co, 1928–1936. Specifically, see Vol. 4, Sec. 2, “Vachogi of Portuguese East Africa.”

  100. 100.

    This is now being addressed in Priscila Freitas de Carvalho, “Preencher as lacunas da ciência”: a missão francesa Rohan-Chabot em Angola e na Rodésia (1912–1958), ongoing PhD thesis, ICS-ULisboa.

  101. 101.

    Alfred Schachtzabel, Im Hochland von Angola. Studienreise durch den Süden Portugiesisch West-Afrikas, Dresden: Deutsche Buchwerkst lten, 1923; Angola. Forschungen und Erlebnisse in Südwestafrika, Berlin: Die Buchgemeinde, 1926.

  102. 102.

    Alexander T. Barns, “In Portuguese West Africa: Angola and the Isles of the Guinea Gulf,” Geographic Journal, Vol. 72, No. 1, July 1928, pp. 18–35; and “Through Portuguese West Africa”, Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 28, No. 111, April 1929, pp. 224–234.

  103. 103.

    Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, Äthiopien des Westerns: Forschungsreisen in Portugiesisch-Guinea, Wien: Seidel & Sohn, 1933. Emmy Bernatzik, his wife, also published the best-seller account Afrikafahrt. Eine Frau bein den Westafrikanischen Negern, Wien: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1936.

  104. 104.

    Paulo Azevedo, op. cit., 2014. Noeme Santana, “Olhares britânicos: Visualizar Lourenço Marques na ótica de J. And M. Lazarus, 1899–1908”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 211–222.

  105. 105.

    Ricardo Roque, “Equivocal Connections: Fonseca Cardoso and the Origins of Portuguese Colonial Anthropology”, Portuguese Studies, Vol. 19, 2003, pp. 80–109.

  106. 106.

    Todd himself would later claim: “The continuous plate-chain, invented […] for photographing the corona of December 22, 1889, in Angola, West Africa, was really a forerunner of the world-wide moving picture of today.” David Todd, “Automatic photography of the sun’s corona”, Popular Astronomy, Vol. 41, 1933, p. 310.

  107. 107.

    Unfortunately, all of Arthur Eddington’s plates from São Tomé and Príncipe have been lost. See Robin McKie, “100 years on: the picture that changed our view of the universe”, The Guardian, 12 May 2019.

  108. 108.

    João Bentes Castelo-Branco, Guia do colono para a Africa portugueza, Porto: Typ. Da Empreza Litteraria e Typographica, 1891, p. 48.

  109. 109.

    For more on the photographic camera’s potential for diplomacy and political leveraging, see Sean Willcock, Victorian Visions of War & Peace. Aesthetics, Sovereignty & Violence in the British Empire, c. 1851–1900, London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021.

  110. 110.

    See Ana Cristina Roque, “Sources for the history of the southern border of Mozambique: Preliminary results of a project on the archives of the Portuguese Commission of Cartography”, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 25:2, 2010, pp. 77–93; and Teresa Mendes Flores, “As Fotografias da Expedição Portuguesa ao Muatiânvuo – 1884/88”, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, No. 47, 2017, pp. 53–77. See also Leandro Antonio Guirro, “O “mato” e a cidade: racismo e demarcação de espaços nos Álbuns Fotográficos e Descritivos da Colônia de Moçambique (1929)”, Faces da História, Vol. 4, No. 1, January–June 2017, pp. 206–225.

  111. 111.

    Luísa Villarinho Pereira, Moçambique: Manoel Pereira (1815–1894): fotógrafo comissionado pelo Governo Português, Lisboa: Author’s edition, 2013; Luísa Villarinho Pereira, Moçambique II - Manoel Joaquim Romão Pereira (1846–1894): novas revelações sobre a sua Colecção Fotográfica, Lisboa: Author’s edition, 2017.

  112. 112.

    Published by the Portuguese magazine O Occidente in 1896. See Leonor Pires Martins, op. cit. See also Maria-Benedita Basto, “Ngungunyane en circulations: images et objets d’un roi africain dans la production des savoirs coloniaux portugais du XIXe siècle”, Reflexos. Revue Pluridisciplinaire du monde lusophone, No. 5, 2020, [Online].

  113. 113.

    See Cátia Miriam Costa, “O outro na narrativa fotográfica de Velloso de Castro: Angola, 1908”, Culturas Populares, No. 7, July–December 2008, pp. 1–16; Mário Matos e Lemos and Alexandre Ramires, O primeiro fotógrafo de guerra português, José Henriques de Mello. Guiné: Campanhas de 1907–1908, Coimbra: Imprensa de Universidade de Coimbra, 2009; Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inês Vieira Gomes, op. cit., 2018; Hugo Silveira Pereira, “Representações metropolitanas do(s) Outro(s) colonizado(s) nas fotografias da campanha do Cuamato de 1907 no sul de Angola”, Eikón Imago, No. 15, 2020, pp. 313–339.

  114. 114.

    José Carlos de Oliveira, “Terras do Fim do Mundo – Campanhas do Kuamato (1905, 1906, 1907),” Revista Militar, Vol. 57, No. 12, 2005, pp. 1469–1477.

  115. 115.

    Okwui Enwezor and Octavio Zaya, In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present, New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1996, p. 231.

  116. 116.

    For foundational studies on how photography has shaped and reshaped itself to conform to local cultural practices, see Christraud M. Geary, op.cit.; Andrew Roberts (ed.), Photographs as Sources for African History, London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1988; Tobias Wendl and Heike Behrend, Snap Me One! Studiofotografen in Afrika, Munich: Prestel, 1998; Pascal Martin Saint Léon et N’Goné Fall, Anthologie de la photographie africaine et de l’océan Indien, Paris: Revue noire, 1998; Thomas Miessgang and Gerald Matt (eds.), Flash Afrique, Photography from West Africa, Göttingen: Steidl, 2002; Andrew Apter, “On Imperial Spectacle: The Dialectics of Seeing in Colonial Nigeria”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2002, pp. 564–596; Anne-Marie Bouttiaux et al., L’Afrique par elle-même: un siècle de photographie africaine, Tervuren and Paris: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale and Éditions Revue noire, 2003; Okwui Enwezor, Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, New York: International Center of Photography, 2006; John Peffer and Elisabeth L. Cameron, Portrait Photography in Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013; Heike Behrend, Contesting Visibility: Photographic Practices on the East African Coast, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2013.

  117. 117.

    See N’Goné Fall (ed.), Photographes de Kinshasa, Paris: Revue noire, 2001.

  118. 118.

    Charles Gondola, Villes Miroirs: Migrations et Identités Urbaines à Kinshasa et Brazzaville, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.

  119. 119.

    Rangel’s work has featured in the landmark world-travelling exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994 (2001) curated by Okwui Enwezor, and has since been the object of multiple shows and film documentaries, such as Lícinio de Azevedo’s Ricardo Rangel – Hot Iron (2009) or Bruno Z’Graggen and Angelo Sansone’s No Flash: Homage to Ricardo Rangel (2012). This is matched by extensive bibliography, including José Craveirinha and Mia Couto, Ricardo Rangel, Fotógrafo de Moçambique, Maputo, Editions Findakly 1994; Bruno Z’Graggen and Grant Lee Nuenburg (eds.), Iluminando vidas: Ricardo Rangel and the Mozambican Photogrpahy, Berlin: Christoph Merian Verlag 2002; Drew Thompson, “Color lines according to the photographer Ricardo Rangel”, Africana Studia, No. 25, 2015, pp. 119–141; Pamila Gupta, “Autoethnographic interventions and ‘intimate exposures’ in Ricardo Rangel’s Portuguese Mozambique”, Critical Arts, 2015, pp. 166–181, and “Ricardo Rangel: ‘The departure of the colonialists’”, Portuguese Decolonization in the Indian Ocean World: History and Ethnography, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, pp. 87–93.

  120. 120.

    António Sopa, Maria das Neves and Maria Deolinda Chamando (eds.), Sebastião Langa: Retratos de uma Vida, Maputo: Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, 2001.

  121. 121.

    See, e.g. Rosalind C. Morris (ed.), Photographies East: The Camera and its Histories in East and Southeast Asia, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009; Karen Strassler, Refracted Visions: Popular Photography and National Modernity in Java, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

  122. 122.

    Jürg Schneider, “Demand and Supply: Francis W. Joaque, an Early African Photographer in an Emerging Market”, Visual Anthropology, Vol. 27, Issue 4, 2014, pp. 316–338.

  123. 123.

    Cited in Olu Oguibe, The Culture Game, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

  124. 124.

    See, for instance, Erin Haney, “Emptying the gallery: The archive’s fuller circle,” Richard Vokes (ed.), Photography in Africa: Ethnographic Perspectives, Woodbridge: James Currey, 2012, pp. 127–139.

  125. 125.

    António Carmo Gouveia, “Do nome à imagem: percursos de uma planta tropical de São Tomé numa fotografia do final do século XIX”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, p. 189.

  126. 126.

    Matos e Lemos and Ramires, op. cit., 2009.

  127. 127.

    In 2011, the Portuguese Cultural Centre of Mindelo, with financial aid from the Portuguese Camões Institute, started a process of conservation, digitization and cataloguing led by Diogo Bento, but it was left unfinished due to the slashing of funds. Some of the work that had been achieved would be damaged by vandalism and theft. We thank João Vasconcelos and Inês Vieira Gomes for this information. Liliana Oliveira da Rocha’s ongoing PhD thesis on this studio [Clichés identitários em Mindelo: estudo antropológico sobre fotografia em Cabo Verde a partir da Foto Melo (1890–1992)] will hopefully help to preserve, classify and open it to the public. See Gisela Coelho, “São Vicente: Resgate de 100 anos de história do espólio da Foto Melo”, A Nação, 27 March 2021.

  128. 128.

    For an important contribution on women photographers, see Inês Vieira Gomes “Women photographers in Angola and Mozambique (1909–1950): A history of an absence”, Darren Newbury, Lorena Rizzo and Kylie Thomas (eds), Women and Photography in Africa. Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges, London: Routledge, 2020, pp. 62–80. See also Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Photography as autobiography: Helena Corrêa de Barros, a woman photographer”, Helena Corrêa de Barros: fotografia, a minha viagem preferida, Lisboa: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa-DAM, 2018, pp. 187–197.

  129. 129.

    Mark Twain, King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule, Boston: P. R. Warren, 1905, p. 68. On this topic, see T. Jack Thompson, Light on Darkness?: Missionary Photography of Africa in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012; and Robert M. Burroughs, Travel Writing and Atrocities: Eyewitness of Colonialism in the Congo, Angola, and the Putumayo, New York: Routledge, 2011.

  130. 130.

    See Mark Sealy, “The Congo Atrocities, A Lecture to Accompany a Series of Sixty Photographic Slides for the Optical Lantern”, in Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2019, pp. 16–64; Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, “As provas da “civilização”: fotografia, colonialismo e direitos humanos”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 387–398.

  131. 131.

    Paul Landau, op. cit.

  132. 132.

    Catherine Higgs, Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012.

  133. 133.

    For the role of photography, see Diogo Ramada Curto, “Prefácio - Políticas Coloniais e Novas Formas de Escravatura”, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, Livros Brancos, Almas Negras, A «missão civilizadora» do colonialismo português c. 1870–1930, Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciênciais Sociais, 2010, pp. 9–40.

  134. 134.

    Fernandes Thomas, Uma visita às propriedades da Sociedade Agrícola Valle Flor, Limitada na Ilha de S. Thomé (1929).

  135. 135.

    See Eric Allina, op. cit.

  136. 136.

    Augusto Nascimento, Poderes e quotidiano nas roças da S. Tomé e Príncipe de finais de oitocentos a meados de novecentos, Lousã: Tipografia Lousanense, 2002.

  137. 137.

    Jeremy Ball, op. cit.

  138. 138.

    See, e.g. Diogo Ramada Curto, “Um álbum fotográfico da Diamang”, Mulemba – Revista Angolana de Ciências Sociais, Vol. 5, No. 10, 2015, pp. 111–160.

  139. 139.

    Letter to Salazar, Luanda, 4 August 1930. Reproduced in Fernando Rosas, Júlia Leitão de Barros and Pedro de Oliveira (eds.), Armindo Monteiro e Oliveira Salazar. Correspondência Política, 1926–1955, Lisboa: Editorial Estampa, 1996, p. 31.

  140. 140.

    Rui de Azevedo Teixeira, A guerra colonial: realidade e ficção, Lisboa: Editorial Notícias, 2001, p. 32.

  141. 141.

    David Birmingham, A Concise History of Portugal, Canterbury: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 177.

  142. 142.

    Franz-Wilhelm Heimer, Educação e sociedade nas áreas rurais de Angola: resultados de um inquérito, Vol. I, Luanda: Missão de Inquéritos Agrícolas de Angola, 1972.

  143. 143.

    The overblown imperial rhetoric as a compensatory mechanism was most famously theorized by Eduardo Lourenço, Do Colonialismo Como Nosso Impensado, Lisboa: Gradiva, 2014.

  144. 144.

    Norton de Matos, Memórias e trabalhos da minha vida, Lisboa: Editora Marítimo-Colonial, 1944, p. 115.

  145. 145.

    Drew Thompson, op. cit., 2021, p. 55.

  146. 146.

    Idem.

  147. 147.

    Gilberto Freyre, Aventura e Rotina, Lisboa: Livros do Brasil, 1952, p. 412.

  148. 148.

    G. Mennen Williams, Africa for the Africans, Ann Arbor: William B. Eerdmans, 1969, p. 128.

  149. 149.

    ANTT—Arquivo Salazar, Plano de António Ferro para uma campanha de propaganda em toda a América e no Brasil em particular, PC-12E, cx. 662, s/d, p. 14. National Archives of Torre do Tombo, Lisbon.

  150. 150.

    Junior Rodrigues, Moçambique, Terra de Portugal, Lisboa: Agência-Geral do Ultramar, 1965, p. 198.

  151. 151.

    James Duffy, ‘The Dual Reality of Portuguese Africa’, The Centennial Review of Arts & Science, Vol. 4, No. 4, Fall 1960, pp: 450–464.

  152. 152.

    Idem.

  153. 153.

    Idem.

  154. 154.

    António de Oliveira Salazar, Discursos 1928–1934, Vol. I, Coimbra: Coimbra Editora, 1961, p. 259.

  155. 155.

    Cartier-Bresson was one of 155 high-profile journalists and photographers hired by the PR firm Peabody and Associates to visit Portugal under Salazar in order to plant positive stories about the dictatorship on US media. See Vasco Ribeiro, “A empresa de relações públicas norte-americana contratada por Salazar (1951–1962)”, Media & Jornalismo, vol. 18, n. 33, 2018, pp. 155–169.

  156. 156.

    See Susana S. Martins, “Os mistérios de Chris Marker em Portugal”, Público, 6 September 2012.

  157. 157.

    Sue Armstrong, In Search of Freedom, Gibraltar: Ashanti, 1989, pp. 96–97. In addition to the photographs, Per Sandén and Rudi Spee also produced the film documentary Frihetskampen i Namibia (1974).

  158. 158.

    See Ros Gray, Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution: Anti-Colonialism, Independence and Internationalism in Filmmaking, 1968–1991, London: Boydell & Brewer, 2020, and Thompson, op. cit., 2021. See also the multi-part film work The Mozambique Archive Series by Catarina Simão (Mueda 1979; These are the Weapons; Effects of Wording; Ntimbe Caetano).

  159. 159.

    Mustafah Dhada, The Portuguese Massacre of Wiriyamu in Colonial Mozambique, 1964–2013, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.

  160. 160.

    John Litweiler, Ornette Coleman: A Harmonological Life, New York: William Morrow, 1992, p. 143.

  161. 161.

    See the recent exhibition of her work at the Museu do Aljube. Resistência e Liberdade in Lisbon: Augusta Conchiglia nos Trilhos da Frente Leste, curated by Maria do Carmo Piçarra and José da Costa Ramos (2021).

  162. 162.

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Para onde olharam elas? Portugal visto por mulheres fotógrafas estrangeiras”, Público P2, 10 March 2019, pp. 12–19.

  163. 163.

    For the rich visual archive on these events by Argus Africa News Service, see Wilf Nussey, Watershed Angola and Mozambique: The Portuguese Collapse in Africa 1974–1975, a Photo History, London: Helion and Company 2014.

  164. 164.

    According to the Guinness Book of World Records of 1987. See Maria do Carmo Piçarra, Azuis Ultramarinos. Propaganda Colonial e Censura no Cinema do Estado Novo, Lisboa: Edições 70, 2015.

  165. 165.

    An invaluable resource for this has been the website Africa in The Photobook (africainthephotobook.com) led by the photo-historian Ben Krewinkel, which compiles photo books produced in and about Africa. A sample of these photobooks was presented by Catarina Boieiro and Raquel Schefer in a show at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris (2021–2022) entitled Résistance visuelle généralisée: Livres de photographie et mouvements de libération – Angola, Mozambique, Guinée-Bissau, Cap-Vert.

  166. 166.

    This album—with images attributed to Firmino Marques da Costa—has been recently brought to public attention by art critic Alexandre Pomar and showcased at Pequena Galeria in Lisbon (2014). See also Sérgio B. Gomes, “Luanda 1938, um olhar desconhecido”, Público, 6 April 2014; Ana Maria Mauad, “Fotografia Pública e cultura visual em perspectiva histórica”, Revista Brasileira de História da Mídia, Vol. 2, No. 2, July–December 2013; and Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photoboook. A History, Vol. III, London: Phaidon, 2005.

  167. 167.

    See Emília Tavares, “Quando o Rio Congo submergiu a Acrópole”, Vasco Araújo, Botânica, Lisboa: Documenta, 2014, pp. 15–41; Susana Martins and António Pinto Ribeiro, “A fotografia artística contemporânea como identidade pós-colonial”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), op. cit., 2014, pp. 461–473; Afonso Dias Ramos, “Imageless in Angola: Appropriating Photography”, Object 17, 2015, pp. 77–99; Ana Balona de Oliveira, “Decolonization in, of and through archival ‘moving images’ of artistic practice”, Comunicação e Sociedade 29, 2016, pp. 131–152; Frank Möller, “Colonial Wars and Aesthetic Reworking: The Artist as Moral Witnesss”, Arts and International Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2017, pp. 13–44; Afonso Dias Ramos, “The Fugitive Image: Colonial Terror and Contemporary Art”, Obs* Journal, 2020, pp. 73–87. See also, e.g. Daniel Barroca, Uma Linha Raspada, Vila Nova da Barquinha: Câmara Municipal de Vila Nova de Barquinha, 2013; Nuno Faria (ed.), CIAJG notebooks: colonial images: revelations from anthropology and contemporary art, Guimarães: Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, 2014; Filipa César and Nuno Faria, The Struggle is not over yet: an archive in relation, Guimarães: Archive Books, 2017; Teresa Matos Pereira, Uma Travessia da Colonialidade. Pintura, coleções e Intervisualidades, Lisboa: Caleidoscópio, 2019.

  168. 168.

    See, for instance, Joana Pontes, Visões do Império (2021); Sabrina D. Marques, Os Fotocines (2021); and Carla Osório, Missão Sudoeste de Angola: Afinal, quem nos define? (2022).

  169. 169.

    Elmano Cunha e Costa, Penteados e Adornos Femininos das Indígenas de Angola, Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1951.

  170. 170.

    We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the insightful comments and suggestions on the manuscript.

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  1. Art History Institute (NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST), Lisbon, Portugal

    Afonso Dias Ramos

  2. Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente

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    Filipa Lowndes Vicente

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    Afonso Dias Ramos

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Ramos, A.D., Vicente, F.L. (2023). Caught on Camera: An Introduction to Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa. In: Vicente, F.L., Ramos, A.D. (eds) Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5_1

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