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.