Abstract
This chapter is an attempt to characterize the different functions of the photographic image in the context of several Portuguese exhibitions of the early Portuguese New State (Estado Novo). It analyzes the network of representations elaborated by the organizers of these events, by measuring the effects of a supposedly voluntary confusion between the clichés performed in colonial lands and the images that testify the scenography of the exhibitions, carried out—mostly—in metropolitan space. At once a support for “colonial science”, an illustration of Portuguese civilizing efforts and an object of political propaganda, the photographic object multiplies its functions in the balance of the exhibitions. In this way, it participates in the transformation of the exhibition space into the factual reproduction of a Portuguese Empire, idealized for political and economic purposes. The chapter also approaches the question of the reception of photography by the visitors of the exhibitions, in their cultural and social diversity, emphasizing its double character: presented as an objective illustration of the African or Asian reality, it reinforces the imperial illusion built by the Salazarist authorities, in a great continuity with previous practices and with the support of various institutions (Catholic Church, Army, colonial companies, trade and employer associations and centers of cultural and scientific production). On a methodological point of view, the study of photography as a set of information for the researcher should demonstrate what can be obtained from an analysis of photography as a historical source of full right, seeking, whenever possible, to reconstitute the context of production as of reception of the cliché, besides analyzing its visual content. This work also involves the confrontation of the photographic source with the abundant written corpus left by the exhibitions (guides, catalogs, press articles and administrative correspondence).
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Notes
- 1.
Cinema, literature, comics and publicity were exploited in this sense, as was national education; these fields have been studied since the last decades of the twentieth century, under the prism of propaganda; Luís Reis Torgal, ed., O Cinema sob o olhar de Salazar (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 2000); Alberto Oliveira Pinto, “O concurso de literatura colonial da Agência Geral das Colónias (1926–1951); colonialismo e propaganda”, Clio (2002), 191–256; Carlos Duarte Paulo, A Honra da Bandeira. A educação colonial no sistema de ensino português (1926–1946), (Lisboa: Universidade Nova, 1992); Luís Cunha, “A imagem do negro na banda desenhada portuguesa: algumas propostas exploratórias”, Cadernos do Noroeste, vol. 8 (1995), 89–112; José Luís Lima Garcia: “A ideia de império na propaganda do Estado Novo”, Revista de História das ideias, vol. 14 (1992), 411- 424. Currently, researchers focus their inquiry on “popular” or “mass culture” and daily practices like urban life, sports, radio or TV shows, etc. See a balance and a conceptual presentation in Nuno Domingos, “Cultura popular urbana e configurações urbanas”, in Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, ed., O Império colonial em questão (sécs. XIX-XX) (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2013), 391–421.
- 2.
It would not make sense in this presentation to attempt an exhaustive, European-wide survey of classic or more recent bibliographic productions on each theme. For the British exhibitions, see: John Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) and Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas. The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). In France, Pascal Ory played a pioneering role in the (re)discovery of the Parisian universal exhibitions of the second half of the twentieth century by historians of the cultural field: Pascal Ory, Les Expositions universelles de Paris: panorama raisonné, avec des aperçus nouveaux et des illustrations des meilleurs auteurs (Paris: Ramsay, 1982). More recently, Alexander C.T. Geppert dedicated a chapter to a global balance of the production of the exposition studies since the fifties: Alexander C.T. Geppert, Fleeting cities. Imperial expositions in fin-de-siècle Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 9–12.
- 3.
Filipa Lowndes Vicente makes the balance of the main works that cross photography and exhibitions in her contribution “ Fotografia e colonialismo: para lá do visível “, in Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, ed., O Império colonial em questão (sécs. XIX-XX) (Lisbon: Edições 70, 2013), 448. In 1999, Anne Maxwell published a pioneer but also controversial monograph on the issue, mainly focused on Pacific, Asian and North American communities: Anne Maxwell, Colonial Photography and Exhibitions. Representations of the “Native” and the Making of European Identities (London, Leicester University Press, 1999). See also the review of the book by Elizabeth Edwards, Aboriginal History, vol. 26, 2002, 257–259.
- 4.
In the period studied, Portugal organized and participated in several exhibitions and colonial fairs, for example: Ibero-American exhibition of Seville (1929), International colonial exhibitions of Antwerp (1930) and Paris (1931), Industrial fair of Lisbon (1932), Fairs of colonial samples of Luanda and Lourenço Marques (1932), Portuguese Colonial Exhibition of Porto (1934), Exhibition of the Portuguese World (1940). The Historic Exposition of the Occupation of 1937, which took place in Lisbon, can also be considered as partially colonial, from a military perspective; Nadia Vargaftig, Des Empires en carton. Les expositions coloniales au Portugal et en Italie (1918–1940) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2016). Annarita Gori, “Celebrate Nation, Commemorate History, Embody the Estado Novo: The Exhibition of the Portuguese World (1940)”, Cultural and social History, vol. 15, n.5, 2018, 699–722.
- 5.
J. Gardner, A Contemporary Archaeology of London’s Mega Events. From the Great Exhibition to London 2012 (London: UCL Press, 2022), 42–84.
- 6.
Anthony Hamber, Photography and the 1851 Great Exhibition (New Castle and London, Oak Knoll Press and V & A Publishing, 2018).
- 7.
Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 87.
- 8.
Benoît de l’Estoile, “Des races non pas inférieures, mais différentes: de l’exposition coloniale au musée de l’Homme”, in Claude Blanckaert, ed., Les politiques de l’anthropologie: discours et pratiques en France (1860–1940) (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2001), 393–397.
- 9.
Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony: rethinking a research agenda”, in Frederick Cooper e Ann Stoler, ed., Tensions of Empire, colonial cultures in a bourgeois world (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 7; Emmanuelle Sibeud, “Les sciences sociales à l’épreuve de la situation coloniale”, Revue d’Histoire des sciences humaines, vol. 1/10 (2004), 3–10.
- 10.
Nadia Vargaftig, Des Empires en carton. Les expositions coloniales au Portugal et en Italie (1918–1940) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2016); Vanessa Rocco, Photofascism. Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy (London, Bloomsbury, 2020).
- 11.
March 19, 1933.
- 12.
The Exhibition, officially called Exposição Colonial Nacional do Porto, took place between June 16 and September 30, 1934.
- 13.
Lieutenant Henrique Galvão (1895–1970) participated, in 1927, in an attempt of coup against the new military regime and was exiled to Angola. He then came back to metropolis and enthusiastically joined the Portuguese New State (Estado Novo) for several years, occupying different functions in the state apparatus. Later, after the Second World War, he became an opponent of the regime and became an international celebrity in 1961 by trying to divert a line boat, the Santa Maria, in order to focus world’s attention to Portugal and its dictatorship.
- 14.
The CM photographic archive was treated and digitized by the services of the Torre do Tombo National Archive, along with the written sources of the same. There are more than 5000 photos available on the site: http://ttonline.dgarq.gov.pt/cmz.htm. The Direction of Statistics and Propaganda was created in 1929; Arquivo da Companhia de Moçambique (ACM), NO 2753, Actas do Conselho de Administração, 65–66.
- 15.
Arquivo Histórico-Ultramarino (AHU), Casa Forte, NO 994, letter from J. Garcez de Lencastre, General agente of Colonies, to Henrique Galvão, General commissioner of the Colonial Exhibition of Porto, June 1st, 1934.
- 16.
Acto colonial, decreto-lei n° 18570, July 8th, 1930.
- 17.
Mário Antunes Leitão and Vitorino Coimbra, Exposição Colonial Portuguesa, Porto 1934, guia oficial do visitante (Porto: Leitão, 1934), 28.
- 18.
Arquivo Histórico-Diplomático (AHD), 3°P, A4, NO 45 “Exposições internacionais até 1933”, report of the Board of commercial affairs to the Minister of Colonies, s. d. (1930).
- 19.
ACM, minutes of the Board of directors, n°2754, letter of the governor of the territory seeking the presence of the boss of the department of Propaganda to defend the CM, June 23, 1930. Eric Allina, Slavery by any other Name. African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2012).
- 20.
Herculano Nunes had a long and intense career as a journalist during the Republican years (1910–1926), writing for several newspapers in Porto and Lisbon and having become known as the founder of the outlaw legacy with Hermano Neves in 1915. From 1924, he gave a new direction to his professional life, joining large colonial companies, first the Bembe Copper Mining Company and then the Companhia de Moçambique.
- 21.
O Século was one of the most important daily newspapers of Portugal, funded in 1880 by some young republican journalists. In the middle of the 1930, there was nevertheless no doubt about its adhesion to the new regime.
- 22.
Domingos Alvão (1872–1946) was already a recognized photographer in Portuguese political and cultural life in 1934, running a very prosperous company in Porto. Close to the Portuguese New State (Estado Novo), he was decorated by the president of the Republic in order to reward his photographic work.
- 23.
Herman Lebovics, “Donner à voir l’Empire colonial. L’Exposition coloniale internationale de Paris en 1931”, Gradhiva (1989–1990), 19.
- 24.
S. Qureshi, Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth Century Britain (Chicago: UCP, 2011).
- 25.
Alvão obtained the exclusive coverage of the event, publishing an official album and illustrating all the catalogs of the Portuguese Colonial Exhibition of Porto; Maria Serén, A Porta do Meio. A Exposição colonial de 1934, fotografias da casa Alvão (Porto: CPF, 2001), 33. Simon Dell has studied the polysemic nature of the portraits produced for the 1931 Paris International Exhibition in one of the chapters of his book; Simon Dell, The Portrait and the Colonial Imaginary. Photography beteween France and Africa 1900–1939 (Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2020), 117–147.
- 26.
“As raças do Império representadas no certame oferecem largo campo de interesse e observação”, O Século, june 20th, 1934.
- 27.
Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “Black Women’s Bodies in the Portuguese Colonial Visual Archive (1900–1975)”, Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, 30/31, 2017, 16–67; the topic of the polysemous presence and/or participation of women in fairs and exhibitions has been studied in T.J. Boisseau and Abigail M. Markwyn ed., Gendering the Fair: Histories of Women and Gender at World’s Fairs (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2010) and Myriam Boussahba-Bravard and Rebecca Rogers ed., Women in International and Universal Exhibitions, 1876–1937 (New York and London: Routledge, 2018).
- 28.
Rebecca Rogers, The Domestication of Women: discrimination in developing societies (London: Tavistock Publications, 1980); Arlette Gautier, “Femmes et colonialisme”, in Marc Ferro, ed., Le Livre noir du colonialisme (Paris: R. Laffont, 2003), 774; more recently, see the results of the international meeting called Femmes et genre en contexte colonial, XIXe-XXe siècles, Paris, Institut d’Études politiques de Paris, January 19–21, 2012, whose presentations are accessible at the URL https://genrecol.hypotheses.org/.
- 29.
ACM, NO 2166 AH, report of the Governor of Manica e Sofala Territory, to the delegate administrator of the CM, Beira, May 8, 1940.
- 30.
Malek Alloula, Le Harem colonial: images d’un sous-érotisme, (Paris-Geneva: Garance-Slatkine, 1981); Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Gilles, Boetsch, Christelle Taraud and Dominic Thomas, ed., Sexe, race et colonies. La domination des corps du XVe siècle à nos jours (Paris: La Découverte, 2018); Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, “Under Imperial Eyes, Black Bodies, Buttlocks, and Breasts. British Colonial Photography and Asante Fetish Girls”, African Arts, summer 2012 vol. 45, n°2, 46–56.
- 31.
Isabel Morais, “‘Little Black Rose’ at the 1934 Exposição Colonial Portuguesa”, in TJ Boisseau and Abigail M. Markwyn ed., Gendering the Fair: Histories of Women and Gender at World’s Fairs (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 19–36.
- 32.
“As raças do Império representadas no certame oferecem largo campo de interesse e observação”, O Século, June 20th, 1934.
- 33.
Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
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Vargaftig, N. (2023). To See, to Sell: The Role of the Photographic Image in Portuguese Colonial Exhibitions (1929–1940). 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_9
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