(Post) Colonial Archives and Images: Analytical Contributions on two Photography Collections

Abstract

This text brings together the genres of ethnographic and documentary photography as a way to problematize how both traditions utilized prevailing discourses of “truth” and “real”, in each given historical period, to give their practices a sense of intelligibility and legitimation. For this purpose, I address the photography collections of Portuguese José Augusto da Cunha Moraes (1855–1933) and Mozambican Ricardo Rangel (1924–2009) in order to shed light on aesthetic and technical conventions incorporated into their photography at the moment of production. My main argument is that a belief in an exterior reality, prone to be fully captured, either for the ends of producing scientific knowledge or denouncing social issues, guided both practices.