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Photographic Sources for the History of Portuguese-Speaking Africa, 1870-1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jill R. Dias
Jill R. Dias*
Affiliation:
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Instituto de Investigação, Cientifica Tropical
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Extract

The wealth of the photographic record of Portuguese Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is only beginning to be appreciated. Until recently it was not only ignored but totally neglected. As a result much has been destroyed. The full extent of the surviving material is, as yet, unknown. Collections of photographs are dispersed in various archives, libraries, and private collections throughout Portugal. In most cases almost nothing is known of the photographers or of the circumstances in which then-work was produced. The photographs themselves have not been studied, so that the work of dating and evaluating their content has yet to be done.

In this paper then I can present only a very preliminary and incomplete survey and exploration of some of the very diverse categories of photographic sources available for the history of Portuguese-speaking Africa between the 1870s and early 1920s, concentrating particularly on Angola and Mozambique. Whenever possible I also try to draw attention to some of the practical and theoretical problems involved in their interpretation as a step towards assessing more accurately their historical and sociological value.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 67 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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References

Notes

1. The present paper is a slightly revised and corrected version of the paper presented to the workshop on Photograph as a Source of African History held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 12-13 May 1988. It surveys mainly original photographic material located in Portuguese archives and in my possession as part of an ongoing research project directed at producing a visual history of the former Portuguese empire.

2. Moraes, J. A. da Cunha, Africa Occidental. Album Photographico e Descriptivo (4 vols.: Lisbon, 1886). vol. 2.Google Scholar

3. See Moraes, C. and Ferreira, S., Africa Occidental. Album Photographico-Literario (Lisbon, 1882), fascicle 3.Google Scholar

10. Morais/Ferreira, Africa Occidental.

11. Nowell, Charles E., The Rose-Colored Map (Lisbon, 1982), 26.Google Scholar

12. Martins, F. A. Oliveira, ed., Hermenegildo Capelo e Roberto Ivens, II, Diàrios da Viagem de Angola à Contra-Costa (Lisbon, 1952), 262.Google Scholar

13. de Carvalho, Henrique Augusto Dias, Descripção da Viagem à Mussumba do Muatiâvua. (Lisbon, 1982), Vol. II, p. 36.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., 68-69. For a more detailed analysis of Carvalho's photograph albums see Heintze, Beatrix, “In Pursuit of a Chameleon: Early Ethnographic Photography from Angola in Context,” HA, 17 (1990), 133-58.Google Scholar

15. FO. 179/248, Cardoso to Hawes. Enclosure in Hawes' to Foreign Secretary, 28 March 1886, cited in Nowell, , Rose-Coloured Map, 87.Google Scholar

16. Album da Província de Moçambique, I (Lisbon, 1891).Google Scholar

17. A complete set of the photographs resulting from this mission is deposited in the Biblioteca de Ajuda, Lisbon.

18. Only part of this photographic record, including glass negatives and prints sold a few years ago by the Freire de Andrade family itself, has so far been traced.

19. “Album da Missõo do Real Padroado da Huila,” ca. 1887/1891. So far the only known copy of this album is the one presented to the Portuguese government minister, Henrique de Barros, in the early 1890s, in my possession. Other miscellaneous prints belonging to the same mission and dating from the same period have also come to light in antiquarian bookshops and some also survive in the archive of the Sociedade de Geografia in Lisbon. No photographic material relating to Africa is presently preserved on the premises of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Lisbon and Carcavelos.

20. Photographs apparently dating from around 1900, reproduced on postcards published by the firm Esteves e Reis, Luanda, after 1910.

21. See, for example, a collection of photographs, probably taken by an official photographer, representing different aspects of the 1907 Cuamato campaign, a complete set of which exists in the Centro de Documentação e da Investigação Histórica, Luanda. Another interesting series of photographs probably taken in northern Angola during campaigns in the early 1900s by an army officer, Carlos Ribeiro Nogueira Ferrão, is deposited in the recently established Arquivo Fotogràfico, Lisbon.

22. Still held in the Company's archive in Lisbon.

23. Staff, E., The Picture Postcard and its Origins (London, 1966).Google Scholar

24. de Sousa, Vicente and Jacob, Neto, Portugal no lo Quartel do Séc. XX documentado pelo Bilhete Postal Ilustrado da Exposição Nacional de Postais Amigos. Bragança 1984. (Porto, 1985), 29.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., 33-43.

26. This is a conservative calculation based on the numeration of a sample of around 800 postcards collected by the author, produced by different firms in Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé, Guiné and Cape Verde.

27. Peterson, Nicolas, “The Popular Image,” in Donaldson, Ian and Donaldson, Tamsin, eds., Seeing the First Australians (Sydney, 1985), 164–180.Google Scholar