Abstract
This text explores the role played by photography as an item used for documenting and as an ancillary tool in some anthropological practices during the first half of the twentieth century. Based on the work by Mendes Correia, anthropologist and archaeologist, Ferraz de Matos analyses the way photography was used in works on the colonial empire in various contexts: Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology; Anthropology courses at the University of Porto; criminal anthropology studies; Centre for Peninsular Ethnology Studies; anthropological missions; and in two of his works—Raças do Império (1943) and Timor Português (1944). This procedure, based on the principle “to see is to know”, will however expose the limitations of some anthropological practices and uncover imprecisions that emerged from the colonial context.
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Notes
- 1.
This translation was financed by national funds through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), I.P within the UID/SOC/50013/2019 Project. I am grateful for the support of the FCT (SFRH/BPD 91349/2012), and the information given by Norberto Santos Júnior in the interviews.
- 2.
Margaret Mead, “Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words”, in Principles of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 3–10.
- 3.
Christopher Pinney, “The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography”, in Anthropology & Photography, 1860–1920, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (London: RAI, 1992), 74–95.
- 4.
Nuno Porto, “Modos de Objectificação da Dominação Colonial: O Caso do Museu do Dundo, 1940–1970” (PhD diss., Universidade de Coimbra, 2002), 151.
- 5.
This expression was also associated with an idea conveyed during the great exhibitions. Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Power and Identity: The Exhibition of Human Beings in the Portuguese Great Exhibitions”, Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power 21, no. 2 (2013): 202–218.
- 6.
Anonymous, Notes and Queries on Anthropology, for the Use of Travelers and Residents in Uncivilized Lands (London: Edward Stanford, 1874–1951).
- 7.
The use of images portraying men and women to establish comparisons, in a systematized way and initially as drawings, dates back to the physiognomic studies and to the work by Johann Caspar Lavater (1741–1801), who sought to determine relationships between the outer appearance and the internal constitution (Johann Caspar Lavater, Physiognomische Fragmente, 4 vols. [Leipzig & Winterthur: n.n., 1775–1778]).
- 8.
Elizabeth Edwards, “Professor Huxley’s ‘Well-considered Plan’”, in Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 138.
- 9.
Nuno Porto, “‘Under the Gaze of the Ancestors’: Photographs and Performance in Colonial Angola”, in Photographs, Objects, Histories, eds. Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (London & New York: Routledge, 2004), 121.
- 10.
On the first decades of SPAE, see Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Anthropology in Portugal: The Case of the Portuguese Society of Anthropology and Ethnology (SPAE), 1918”, in Local Knowledge: Global Stage, volume 10 of Histories of Anthropology Annual, eds. Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 53–97.
- 11.
António Mendes Correia, Timor Português: Contribuições para o seu Estudo Antropológico (Lisbon: Ministério das Colónias, 1944).
- 12.
António Mendes Correia, Raças do Império (Porto: Portucalense Editora, 1943).
- 13.
A practice whereby the images were projected onto a wall, or surface, and a predecessor of the cinematographic projection.
- 14.
Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, Anthropology, Nationalism and Colonialism: Mendes Correia and the Porto School of Anthropology (Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books, 2023).
- 15.
António Mendes Correia, Antropologia: Resumo das Lições feitas pelo Assistente (Porto: Imprensa Portuguesa, 1915).
- 16.
António Mendes Correia, Os Criminosos Portugueses (Porto: Imprensa Portuguesa, 1913).
- 17.
http://digitarq.cpf.dgarq.gov.pt/details?id=39150, accessed December 2011.
- 18.
http://www.redeconhecimentojustica.mj.pt/Category.aspx?id=78, accessed December 2011.
- 19.
http://digitarq.cpf.dgarq.gov.pt/details?id=39150), accessed December 2011; Leonor Maria de Amorim e Sá, Infâmia e Fama: O Mistério dos Primeiros Retratos Judiciários em Portugal (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2018).
- 20.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1977).
- 21.
Georges Balandier, “The Colonial Situation: a theoretical approach”, in Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict, ed. Pierre L. van der Berghe (San Francisco: Chandler, 1951), 34–61.
- 22.
Letter from Santos Júnior to Mendes Correia, 9 October 1945, Museum of Natural History of FCUP.
- 23.
Letter from Santos Júnior to Mendes Correia, 16 October 1946, Museum of Natural History of FCUP.
- 24.
Ana Cristina Roque, “Missão Antropológica de Moçambique: Antropologia, História e Património”, in Viagens e Missões Científicas nos Trópicos. 1883–2010, eds. Ana Cristina Martins and Teresa Albino (Lisbon: IICT, 2010), 84–89.
- 25.
Clara Carvalho, “O Olhar Colonial: Antropologia e Fotografia no Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa”, in A Persistência da História: Passado e Contemporaneidade em África, eds. Clara Carvalho and João de Pina-Cabral (Lisbon: ICS, 2004), 136.
- 26.
António de Almeida, “Da Onomástica-Tabu no Timor Português – Antropónimos e Zoónimos”, In Memoriam 3 (1974), 9–26; Ruy Cinatti, “Alguns Aspectos de Mudança Social no Timor Português”, In Memoriam 3 (1974), 95–105.
- 27.
The captions include expressions such as “Proto-Malay”, “Melanesoid” “and “Caucasoid”.
- 28.
In prints XIII and XXXVII, he refers to “mongoloidism”.
- 29.
These photographs (about 549) were initially organized in the “Fontoura Album”, of which three copies are said to exist: Álvaro Fontoura, Colónia Portuguesa de Timor (S.l.: n.n., 1936–1940 [?]). See www.ics.ul.pt/ahsocial/fontoura/apresentacao/Default.htm, accessed May 2014.
- 30.
António Mendes Correia, Um Mês em Timor (Lisbon: n.n., 1955).
- 31.
Processo n.° 306 de Mendes Correia, 1st volume, IICT. Doc. no. 99.
- 32.
Letter by Mendes Correia, president of Geographical Missions and Overseas Research Committee (Junta das Missões Geográficas e de Investigações do Ultramar [JMGIU]), dated 16 July 1953, sent to the president of the executive committee of JMGIU. Processo n.° 306 de Mendes Correia, 2nd volume, IICT. Doc. 225.
- 33.
Maria Johanna Schouten, “Antropologia e Colonialismo em Timor Português”, Lusotopie 8, no.s 1–2 (2001): 167.
- 34.
Correia, Raças, 6.
- 35.
Correia, Raças, 25, 38.
- 36.
During this period structures were created such as Geographical Missions and Colonial Research Committee (Junta das Missões Geográficas e de Investigações Coloniais [JMGIC], 1936), National Propaganda Secretariat (Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional [SPN], 1933–1944), Cinegraphic Mission to the African Colonies (Missão Cinegráfica às Colónias de África [MCCA], 1937), National Information Service (Serviço Nacional de Informação [SNI], 1944–1974), and several periodicals (Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, The Colours of the Empire: Racialized Representations during Portuguese Colonialism [Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books, 2013]).
- 37.
Including images by Émile Cartailhac, Henri Breuil, Hugo Obermaier, Marcellin Boule, Arthur Woodward and Hans Weinert. He also cites Portuguese authors: Paula e Oliveira, Barros e Cunha, Santos Júnior and members of the Portugália group (Fonseca Cardoso, Ricardo Severo and Rocha Peixoto).
- 38.
Correia uses the expression “sexes”.
- 39.
Correia, Raças, 43–45.
- 40.
Sometimes the decisive factor for choosing one of them (physical or sociocultural) was related to the way the photograph was captured, trying to investigate what aspect the photographer wanted to highlight.
- 41.
Besides being a lawyer in Lisbon in the 1930s, he was photographer in Africa.
- 42.
AAVV, Trabalhos do I Congresso Nacional de Antropologia Colonial, I (Porto: Imprensa Portuguesa, 1934), 28–29.
- 43.
On the establishment of these relationships, see Bones, Bodies, Behaviour: Essays on Biological Anthropology (HOA 5), ed. George W. Jr. Stocking (London: UWP, 1988).
- 44.
“Chicunda blackman, ‘Alfanête’, from Mozambique: projecting supraciliary arches, elusive forehead and other inferior characters” (Correia, Raças, 22).
- 45.
On the issues raised by miscegenation in Portugal, see Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Racial and Social Prejudice in the Colonial Empire: Issues Raised by Miscegenation in Portugal (Late Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Centuries)”, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 28, no. 2 (2019): 23–44.
- 46.
Elizabeth Edwards, “Introduction”, in Anthropology & Photography, 1860–1920, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (London: RAI, 1992), 7.
- 47.
People with fair/white skin.
- 48.
He considered that Boas’ results should be interpreted with reserve, since, despite recognizing that certain environmental influences may change individual cephalic indices (growth diseases, anomalies, obstetric conditions), the cases stated by the American author are exceptions; they cannot cause changes as quickly and do not clearly distort statistic results. Mendes Correia, Raízes de Portugal (Lisbon: Revista Ocidente, 1944 [1938]), 91–92.
- 49.
This formulation can also be related to the post–World War II period, during which the use of the “race” criterion became problematic. Mendes Correia, Uma Jornada Científica na Guiné Portuguesa (Lisbon: AGC, 1947), 127. On his travel to Guinea, see Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Modos de Fazer da Antropologia Colonial: A Missão Científica de Mendes Correia à Guiné Portuguesa (1945–1946)”, in Modos de Fazer/Ways of Making, ed. Vítor Oliveira Jorge (Porto: CITCEM, 2020), 167–180.
- 50.
Joanna C. Scherer, “The Photographic Document: Photograph as Primary Data in Anthropological Enquiry”, in Anthropology & Photography, 1860–1920, ed. Elizabeth Edwards (London: RAI, 1992), 32.
- 51.
Joan M. Schwartz, “We Make our Tools and Our Tools Make Us: Lessons from Photographs for the Practice, Politics and Poetics of Diplomatics”, Archivaria 40 (1995): 51.
- 52.
Edwards, “Introduction”, 6.
- 53.
Matos, The Colours of the Empire.
- 54.
On the musealization of photography produced in the colonial context, see Liliana Oliveira da Rocha and Patrícia Ferraz de Matos, “Fotografia Colonial: Materialidades e Imaterialidades Identitárias no Contexto Português”, Criar Educação 7, no. 2 (2018): 1–23.
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de Matos, P.F. (2023). To See Is to Know? Anthropological Differentiations on Portuguese Colonial Photography Through the Work of Mendes Correia. 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_6
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