Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times

Thompson, Drew A.

doi:doi:10.3998/mpub.11476976

Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times

Drew A. Thompson

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Overview
Contents

Photographers and their images were critical to the making of Mozambique, first as a colony of Portugal and then as independent nation at war with apartheid in South Africa. When the Mozambique Liberation Front came to power, it invested substantial human and financial resources in institutional structures involving photography, and used them to insert the nation into global debates over photography's use. The materiality of the photographs created had effects that neither the colonial nor postcolonial state could have imagined.

Filtering Histories: The Photographic Bureaucracy in Mozambique, 1960 to Recent Times tells a history of photography alongside state formation to understand the process of decolonization and state development after colonial rule. At the center of analysis are an array of photographic and illustrated materials from Mozambique, South Africa, Portugal, and Italy. Thompson recreates through oral histories and archival research the procedures and regulations that engulfed the practice and circulation of photography. If photographers and media bureaucracy were proactive in placing images of Mozambique in international news, Mozambicans were agents of self-representation, especially when it came to appearing or disappearing before the camera lens. Drawing attention to the multiple images that one published photograph may conceal, Filtering Histories introduces the popular and material formations of portraiture and photojournalism that informed photography's production, circulation, and archiving in a place like Mozambique. The book reveals how the use of photography by the colonial state and the liberation movement overlapped, and the role that photography played in the transition of power from colonialism to independence.

Citable Link

Published: 2021

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

ISBN(s)

978-0-472-05464-0 (paper)
978-0-472-07464-8 (hardcover)
978-0-472-12718-4 (ebook)

Series

African Perspectives

Subject

African Studies

Resources

Filtering by: Creator Rangel, Ricardo

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Fig. 1. Halftone published in daily newspaper A Tribuna of a photograph by press-photographer Ricardo Rangel of two young black boys seated in front of a camera that highlights Mozambicans as the makers and consumers of photographic images.

"The pose for posterity is common to all people and to all ages. Attentive and serious, two clients face the lens of the camera."

From Introduction

Figure 1. “A pose para a posteridade é comum a todas as pessoas e a todas as idades. Atentos e graves, dois clients encaram a lente da objectiva.” (“The pose for posterity is common to all people and to all ages. Attentive and serious, two clients face the lens of the camera.”) A Tribuna, 3 Outubro 1964, Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique.

Fig. 2. A reprinting of figure 1 as an exhibition print, bringing into view colonial-era photography practices and providing an example of how the colonial state censored photographs.

"Traveling photographer at the Vasco da Gama Market"

From Introduction

Figure 2. Ricardo Rangel, 1958, “O foto ambulante no Mercado Vasco da Gama” (“Traveling photographer at the Vasco da Gama Market”). Caixa: Rangel: Tempo Colonial, Centro de Documentação e Formação Fotográfica, Maputo, Mozambique.

Fig. 3. People gathering outside of a café window in the colonial capital Lourenço Marques to read a paper with information about Goa’s independence.

"The Initiation of the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire: A Placard in Lourenço Marques Announcing the Annexation of Goa to India"

From Chapter 1

Figure 3. Ricardo Rangel, 1964, “O início do desomonamento do Império Português: Placard em Lourenço Marques anuncia do a anexação de Goa pela India—1964” (“The initiation of the collapse of the Portuguese Empire: A placard in Lourenço Marques announcing the annexation of Goa to India—1964”). Caixa: Rangel: Tempo Colonial, Centro de Documentação e Formação Fotográfica, Maputo, Mozambique.

Fig. 4. Portuguese military marching down the streets of the colonial capital Lourenço Marques. Photographs like this frequently appeared in colonial-era newspapers, and illustrate how local populations and the colonial state in Mozambique used photography.

Untitled photo by Ricardo Rangel, no date

From Chapter 1

Figure 4. Ricardo Rangel, undated, untitled. Caixa: Rangel: Tempo Colonial, Centro de Documentação e Formação Fotográfica, Maputo, Mozambique.

Fig. 15. Portuguese soldiers and other personnel associated with the colonial state at the airport, preparing to leave Mozambique as Portugal and Frelimo negotiated an end to the war and independence.

Untitled photo by Ricardo Rangel, June 23, 1975

From Chapter 1

Figure 15. Ricardo Rangel, 23 Junho 1975, “Retornando soldados Portuguese” (“The returning Portuguese soldiers”). Caixa: Fuga dos Colonos (“The fleeing of the settlers”), Centro de Documentação e Formação Fotográfica, Maputo, Mozambique.

Fig. 29. Pictures by Ricardo Rangel as published in the weekly magazine Tempo of shoe shiners and newspaper vendors that he took in both Portugal and Mozambique.

"As pedras da terra não têm cor" ("The stones of the earth do not have color")

From Chapter 3

Figure 29. Albino Magaia with photographs by Ricardo Rangel, “As pedras da terra não têm cor” (“The stones of the earth do not have color”). Tempo, No. 217, 24 Novembro 1974, 37, Biblioteca Nacional de Moçambique, Maputo, Mozambique, accessed through interlibrary loan at Bard College.