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Vision and Violence. Black Women’s Bodies on Display (1900–1975)

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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

The European colonial visual archive, be it Portuguese, French, Belgian, Italian or German, reveals the banalisation of the practice of white men from the military, administrative, medical, scientific or commercial colonial European enterprise photographing unnamed African colonised women and making them available to a much wider public. The pervasiveness of images of black women and girls’ bodies in the Portuguese and other European colonial contexts—in photographs, photographic postcards, propaganda leaflets, colonial exhibition documentation, or illustrations in newspapers and magazines—demonstrates that the gendered and racialised body of (unnamed) colonised women was a powerful trope of colonial hegemony. This article will discuss some of the issues and challenges of dealing with these images through specific case studies, analysing them in the past and in the present. In all of them, this chapter considers the context of production of the images at the time, but mainly focuses on the places where they are today and the problems and ethical challenges that they suggest.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Deborah Poole, Vision, Race and Modernity: A Visual Economy of the Andean Image World (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997).

  2. 2.

    Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995); Patricia Hayes, “‘Cocky’ Hahn and the ‘Black Venus’: the Making of a Native Commissioner in South West Africa, 1915–46”, in Cultures of Empire: A Reader. Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Taylor and Francis, 2000), pp. 329–355, p. 350. The article was first published in Gender and History 8, 3 (November 1996): pp. 364–92.

  3. 3.

    Ayo Abiétou Coly, “Housing and Homing the Black Female Body in France: Calixthe Beyala and the Legacy of Sarah Baartman and Josephine Baker”, in Barbara Thompson, ed., Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; University of Washington Press, 2008), pp. 259–277, p. 272.

  4. 4.

    Debra S. Singer, “Reclaiming Venus. The presence of Sarah Bartmann in Contemporary Art”, in Black Venus. They Called her “Hottentot”, edited by Deborah Willis (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2010), pp. 87–95.

  5. 5.

    I first wrote about the case of Rosita for a newspaper article: Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Rosita ou o Império como um objecto de desejo,” Público, 25 August 2013, later translated into French: “Rosita. La Vénus noire de Porto,” Books.fr: livres & idées du monde entier, n. 52, March 2014, pp. 50–53. See also the exhibition catalogue of Domingos Alvão’s photographs of the 1934 Porto Colonial Exhibition: Maria do Carmo Serén, ed., A Porta do Meio: a Exposição Colonial de 1934: Fotografias da Casa Alvão (Porto: Centro Português de Fotografia, 2001) and Leonor Martins, Império de Papel: Imagens do Colonialismo Português na Imprensa Periódica Ilustrada (1875–1940) (Lisboa: Edições 70, 2012).

  6. 6.

    (1934), Untitled, Fundação Mário Soares / C1.6—Secretaria dos Negócios Indígenas, Disponível HTTP: http://www.casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=10428.255 (2022-9-19).

  7. 7.

    On the encouragement of colonial emigration, see the work of Cláudia Castelo, Passagens para África. O Povoamento de Angola e Moçambique com naturais da Metrópole (1920–1974) (Porto: Afrontamento, 2007).

  8. 8.

    (1934), Untitled [“Guia de trânsito para que Manuel Pires, fotografo encarregue de organizar a representação fotográfica da Guiné na Exposição Colonial Portuguesa, se desloque à Circunscrição Civil dos Bijagós”], Fundação Mário Soares / C1.6—Secretaria dos Negócios Indígenas, Disponível HTTP: http://www.casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=10427.189 (2022-9-19).

  9. 9.

    (1934), Untitled [“Duas faturas de Manuel Pires, fotógrafo, por fornecimentos à Direção dos Serviços e Negócios Indígenas (Exposição Colonial)”], Fundação Mário Soares / C1.6—Secretaria dos Negócios Indígenas; http://www.casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=10427.156 (2022-9-19).

  10. 10.

    (1934), Untitled [“Por ordem do Governador, solicita envio de 10 raparigas balantas com “boa apresentação” destinadas à Exposição Colonial, visto as anteriores terem sido rejeitadas”], Fundação Mário Soares / C1.6—Secretaria dos Negócios Indígenas; http://www.casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=10427.120.003 (2022-9-19).

  11. 11.

    See the excellent article by Isabel Morais, “‘Little Black Rose’ at the 1934 Exposição Colonial Portuguesa,” in Gendering the Fair: Histories of Women and Gender at World’s Fairs, edited by T.J. Boisseau and Abigail M. Markwyn, foreword by Robert W. Rydell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), pp. 19–36. For a recent overview on colonial exhibitions see Nadia Vargaftig, Des Empires en carton: Les expositions coloniales au Portugal et en Italie (Madrid: Casa de Velazquez, 2016).

  12. 12.

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inês Vieira Gomes, “Inequalities on trial: conflict, violence and dissent in the making of colonial Angola (1907–1920)”, in Francisco Bethencourt, ed., Inequality in the Portuguese-speaking World (Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2018), pp. 217–242.

  13. 13.

    See “Eduardo Malta”, in Teresa Matos Pereira, Uma Travessia da Colonialidade: Pintura, Coleções e Intervisualidades (Lisboa: Caleidoscópio, 2019), pp. 185–190.

  14. 14.

    (1934), Untitled, [“Queixa, por parte da comitiva de bijagós que integrou a representação da Colónia da Guiné na 1.ª Exposição Colonial Portuguesa, de terem sido obrigados a trabalhar sem nada receberem em troca, com a agravante de terem deixado de lavrar as suas terras durante o tempo da exposição, pelo que agora nada possuem para pagamento de impostos”], Fundação Mário Soares / C1.6—Secretaria dos Negócios Indígenas, http://www.casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=10428.220 (2022-9-19).

  15. 15.

    I previously wrote about this image in Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Introduction”, in Filipa Lowndes Vicente (ed.), O Império da Visão: Fotografia no Contexto Colonial português (1860–1960), (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2014), pp. 11–29 and in a newspaper article.

  16. 16.

    Nuno Borges de Araújo, “Fotografia científica em Angola, no último quartel do século XIX: o caso do naturalista José de Anchieta”, in Vicente, ed., O Império da visão, 2014, pp. 171–181.

  17. 17.

    “Hoje é esta encantadora selvagem! Repare bem no olhar dela e, veja lá, se é ou não o que eu lhe tenho dito. Um olhar mau e um ar insolente, não é? Esta gente é toda ruim e odeiam todos os brancos.” Postcard sent by Zé to his mother. While in the other two postcards the signature is clear, in this one the word he chose as a signature sign is unclear, probably a private joke. Johannesburg, 4/6/76. Printed caption: “Lesotho-Southern Africa. Perfect balance and poise is necessary when strolling with babe and clay pot” [also written in dutch]. Edited by Artco. Art publishers (PTY) LTD.

  18. 18.

    “Aqui tem mais um postal para a sua colecção e olhe que há muita gente, [sic] têm coleções destes postais que são uma maravilha. Beijinhos e saudades”.

  19. 19.

    Postcard send by Zé to his mother. Johannesburg, 30/5/76. Printed caption: “Zulu Maiden. Natal. South Africa. Resplendent in a finery of beads, and with clay on her face, she’s the “belle” of the African Kraal” [also written in dutch]. Edited by Artco. Art publishers (PTY) LTD. Photo: John Hone.

  20. 20.

    “Quiz saber quanto custam estes postais, não é? Pois é só dez cêntimos [underlined in the original] o equivalente a esc. 4.00. Não sendo barato, também não é muito caro, se atendermos às magnificas imagens que nos apresentam, não é verdade?”

  21. 21.

    David Prochaska, “Fantasia of the Photothèque: French Postcard Views of Colonial Senegal” in African Arts, October 1991, vol. 24, n. 4, Special Issue: Historical Photographs of Africa, pp. 40–47.

  22. 22.

    Vasco Araújo. Botânica, with a text by the curator Emília Tavares (Lisboa: Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea—Museu do Chiado; Documenta, 2014) [Exhibition from 12 March, 2014 to 18 May, 2014].

  23. 23.

    “Portuguese soldier with Guinean woman, Portuguese colonial war. Guiné-Bissau.1962”, unknown author, private collection.

  24. 24.

    Retornar. Traços de Memória [Galeria Av. da India, Exhibition from November 2015 to February 2016].

  25. 25.

    I have already written about these photographs—and reproduced them in a reduced size—in the book chapter: Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Retornar não é possível. Fotografia nas partidas, nos regressos e na distância,” in Elsa Peralta, Bruno Góis, Joana Gonçalo Oliveira, eds., Retornar: Traços de memória do fim do Império (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2017), pp. 197–212. Maria José Lobo Antunes also wrote on photography and on these specific photographs for the same catalogue “O que se vê e o que não pode ser visto: Fotografia, violência e guerra”, pp. 213–224: Júlia Garraio has also written on these photographs in the article “Perdidas na exposição? Desafiar o imaginário colonial português através de fotografias de mulheres negras”, in Ribeiro and Ribeiro, eds., Geometrias da memória: 279–303.

  26. 26.

    Sexe, race & colonies, La domination des corps du XVe siècle à nos jours, Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles Boëtsch, Dominic Thomas, Christelle Taraud & al. (Paris: La Découverte, 2018).

  27. 27.

    Maria José Lobo Antunes, “A crack in everything: Violence in soldiers’ narratives about the Portuguese colonial war in Angola”, History and Anthropology, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1786381.

  28. 28.

    Saidiyia Hartman, “Venus in two acts”, Small Axe, n° 26 (vol. 12, n. 2), June 2008, pp. 1–14.

  29. 29.

    Maria José Lobo Antunes, “Curating the past: memory, history, and private photographs of the Portuguese colonial wars”.

  30. 30.

    Maria José Lobo Antunes, Regressos Quase Perfeitos. Memórias da Guerra em Angola (Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2016).

  31. 31.

    Antunes, 2020, p. 12.

  32. 32.

    Antunes, 2020, p. 15.

  33. 33.

    See Paulo de Medeiros, “War Pics: Photographic Representations of the Colonial War”, in Luso-Brazilian Review, Winter, 2002, vol. 39, n. 2, Special Issue: Portuguese Cultural Studies, pp. 91–106.

  34. 34.

    Clara Roldão Pinto Caldeira, “O corpo nas imagens da guerra colonial portuguesa: subjectividades em análise”, in Galaxia (São Paulo, online), n. 40, jan-abr. 2019, pp. 17–40.

  35. 35.

    Caldeira, “O corpo…”, p. 30.

  36. 36.

    Ifi Amadiume, “African Women’s Body Images in Postcolonial Discourse and Resistance to Neo-Crusaders” and Barbara Thompson, “Decolonizing Black Bodies: Personal Journeys in the Contemporary Voice”, in Barbara Thompson, ed., Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; University of Washington Press, 2008), pp. 49–69, pp. 279–311; Ayo A. Coly, “Subversive and Pedagogical hauntologies: the unclothed female body in visual and performance arts”, Postcolonial Hauntologies. African Women’s Discourses of the female body” (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).

  37. 37.

    Leïla Slimani, “Regard sur une image”, in Pascal Blanchard & Gilles Boetsch, Le Racisme en Images. Déconstruire ensemble (Paris: Éditions de la Martinière, 2021), pp. 102–103.

  38. 38.

    Geary, “The Black Female Body…” and Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, “The Body of a Myth: Embodying the Black Mammy Figure in Visual Culture”, in Barbara Thompson, ed., Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; University of Washington Press, 2008), pp. 143–160, p. 149; pp. 163–179; Lilia Moritz Schwarcz has been exploring this subject both in her written work and through the curating of exhibitions: Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, “Black Nannies: Hidden and Open Images in the Paintings of Nicolas-Antoine Taunay”, Women’s History Review, 2017, pp. 1–18; Boris Kossoy and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Um Olhar Sobre o Brasil: a Fotografia na Construção da Imagem da Nação: 1833–2003 (Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva; Fundación Mapfre, 2012).

  39. 39.

    Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb, eds., Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998); Aline Ripert and Claude Frère, La Carte postale: son histoire, sa fonction sociale (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon; Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1983).

  40. 40.

    Elizabeth Edwards, “Anthropology and Photography (1910–1940)”, in The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. V, 2014, pp. 47–62, p. 48.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., p. 53.

  42. 42.

    Ariella Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography (London: Zone Books, 2008), p. 11.

  43. 43.

    Ana Martins Marques, “As casas pertencem aos vizinhos...”, in O Livro das Semelhanças. Poemas (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2015), p. 60.

  44. 44.

    David Bindman, Suzanne Preston Blier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art (Cambridge, Mass.; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017). This is the companion volume to the series published between 2010 and 2017 in five volumes; Adrienne L. Childs and Susan H. Libby, Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014); Okwui Enwezor, “Reframing the black subject: ideology and fantasy in contemporary South African representation”, in Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor, ed., Reading the contemporary African art from theory to the marketplace (London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1999); Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “The Black Person in Art: How should S/He be portrayed”, in Black American Literature Forum, vol. 21, n. 1/2 (Spring-Summer 1987), pp. 3–24.

  45. 45.

    Geary, “The Image of the Black in Early African Photography”, pp. 141–166; Barbara Thompson, ed., Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; University of Washington Press, 2008). Exhibition Catalogue; Geary, “The Black Female Body…”, pp. 143–160; Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002); Gen Doy, “More than Meets the Eye...Representations of Black Women in Mid-nineteenth-century French Photography”, in Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 21, n. 3, 1998, pp. 305–319.

  46. 46.

    See the many studies on Sara Bartman or Hottentot Venus, as she was also known, as well as, for example, Ciraj Rassool and Patricia Hayes, “Science and Spectacle: /Khanako’s South Africa, 1936–1937”, in Wendy Woodward, Patricia Hayes and Gary Minkley, eds., Deep hiStories: Gender and Colonialism in Southern Africa (Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 117–161.

  47. 47.

    Some examples of many: Patricia Hayes and G. Minkley, eds., Ambivalent. Photography and Visibility in African History (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2019); Tina M. Campt, Listening to Images (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017); Tina M. Campt, Image Matters: Archive, Photography and the African Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press), 2012; Tina M. Campt, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich (Ann Harbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Leigh Raiford, “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory,” History and Theory, vol. 48, n.4, Theme issue: Photography and Historical Interpretation (December 2009), pp. 112–129; In/Sight: African Photographers from 1940 to the Present, Exhibition Catalogue (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1996).

  48. 48.

    Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1986).

  49. 49.

    Mieke Bal, “A Postcard from the edge”, in Double Exposures. The subject of Cultural Analysis (New York, London: Routledge, 1991).

  50. 50.

    Temi Odumosu, “The Crying Child. On Colonial Archives, Digitization, and Ethics of Care in the Cultural Commons”, Current Anthropology, vol. 61, Suppl. 22, October 2020.

  51. 51.

    Christraud M. Geary, “The Black Female Body, the Postcard, and the Archives”, in Barbara Thompson, ed., Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; University of Washington Press, 2008), pp. 147–152.

  52. 52.

    Christraud M. Geary, “The Image of the Black in Early African Photography”, in David Bindman, Suzanne Preston Blier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in African and Asian Art (Cambridge, MA; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 141–166, pp. 159–165; Geary, “The Black Female Body…”, pp. 152–156.

  53. 53.

    Erin Haney, Photography and Africa (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), pp. 49–55, 71–76; Geary, “The Image of the Black in Early African Photography”, pp. 141–166, pp. 143–159; Christraud M. Geary, “Through the Lenses of African Photographers: Depicting Foreigners and New Ways of Life, 1870–1950”, in David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in Western Art: The Twentieth Century: The Impact of Africa, vol. V (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2014), pp. 87–99.

  54. 54.

    Teju Cole, “Letter to a friend”, in As We Rise. Photography from the Black Atlantic. Selections from the Wedge Collection, New York, Aperture, 2021, pp. 6–7.

  55. 55.

    Bal, “A postcard from the edge”, p. 197.

  56. 56.

    Garraio, Júlia, “Perdidas na exposição? Desafiar o imaginário colonial português através de fotografias de mulheres negras,” in Ribeiro and Ribeiro, eds., Geometrias da memória, pp. 279–303.

  57. 57.

    Ariella Aisha Azoulay, Potential History. Unlearning Imperialism (London: Verso, 2019).

  58. 58.

    Francesca de Rosa, “África em Lisboa: os Indígenas da Guiné na Grande Exposição Industrial e Guiné Aldeia Indígena em Lisboa—1932: A construção do corpo feminino”, in Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. 29, 2016, pp. 197–217.

  59. 59.

    Carlos Barradas, “Descolonizando enunciados: a quem serve objetivamente a fotografia?”, Filipa Lowndes Vicente, org., O Império da Visão: Fotografia no Contexto Colonial Português (1860–1960) (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2014), pp. 447–459.

  60. 60.

    Mieke Bal, “A Postcard from the Edge”, Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 195–224.

  61. 61.

    Saidiya Hartman, “The Beauty of the Ungovernable” within the Seminar Imperial Origins of Racialized Lives: From Enslavement to Black Lives Matter, Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Displacement, Brown University, 7 April 2017.

  62. 62.

    Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in two Acts,” in Small Axe, Number 26 (vol. 12, n. 2), June 2008, pp. 1–14.

  63. 63.

    See, for example: Deborah Willis, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009); Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers—1840 to the Present (NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000; Paul Gilroy, Black Britain. A Photographic History, preface by Stuart Hall (London: Saqui in association with gettyimages, 2007); As We Rise. Photography from the Black Atlantic (New York: Aperture, 2021), the book-catalogue of Kenneth Montague’s photographic collection.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rhian Atkin for her revision of the English text.

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

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente

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

    Filipa Lowndes Vicente

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

    Afonso Dias Ramos

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Vicente, F.L. (2023). Vision and Violence. Black Women’s Bodies on Display (1900–1975). 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_11

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