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

Thompson, Drew A.

doi:doi:10.3998/mpub.11476976

Drew A. Thompson

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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.

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Portugal’s Photographic Play
Chapter 2. Paper Diplomacy
Chapter 3. The Photographer as Bureaucrat, the Bureaucrat as Photographer
Chapter 4. ID’ing the Past
Chapter 5. Naming Mozambique’s Dead Photographs
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Resources

Filtering by: Keyword photographic portraiture

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Fig. 42. Reporting in Tanzania’s Daily News on how Frelimo officials named and publicly displayed its enemies at the end of the war. Part of the coverage included individual portraits of Frelimo’s enemies.

"Frelimo militants expose traitors"

From Chapter 4

Figure 42. Marcelino Komba, “Frelimo Militants Expose Traitors.” Daily News (Tanzania), March 30, 1975, Centros Estudos Africanos, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique, accessed through interlibrary loan at Bard College.

Fig. 43. Newspaper reporting in Noticias on Operação Produção including a photograph of local officials inside an the house of an unidentified family as part of state efforts to verify people’s identification.

"An aspect of the verification of houses in the barrio of Alto Maé"

From Chapter 4

Figure 43. “Aspecto da verifição de uma das casas no Bairro do Alto Maé” (“An aspect of the verification of houses in the barrio of Alto Maé”). Notícias, 2 Agosto 1983, accessed through Mozambique History Net and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, New York.

Fig. 44. Coverage of Operação Produção printed in Tempo, including an almost full-page black-and-white halftone that shows relocated populations lined up in front of state officials.

Untitled photo by Danilo Guimarães

From Chapter 4

Figure 44. Danilo Guimarães, 1983, “‘Operação Produção’: Nampula em tempo de acertos” (“‘Operation Production’: Nampula in the Time of Success”). Tempo, No. 673, 4 Setembro 1983, 22, accessed through Mozambique History Net and interlibrary loan at Bard College.

Fig. 45. Coverage of Operação Produção printed in Tempo. In order to show state officials and relocated populations in the same frame, press photographers sometimes had to literally position themselves on the side of the state. In this particular instance, the photographer Danilo Guimarães stands behind the state officials, who, as the caption notes, are listening to the experiences of relocated populations.

"To hear the opinion and the preoccupations of each evacuee was the preoccupation of the brigade of the Central Operation Command"

From Chapter 4

Figure 45. Danilo Guimarães, 1983, “Ouvir a opinião e as preocupações de cada evacuado foi a preocupação da brigade do Comando Central Operativo” (“To hear the opinion and the preoccupations of each evacuee was the preoccupation of the brigade from the Central Command Operation”). Tempo, No. 673, 4 Setembro 1983, 26, accessed through Mozambique History Net and interlibrary loan at Bard College.

Fig. 46. A halftone of a photograph showing a person using his suitcase to block the view of a photographer. Based on the image, the photographer appears to be trying to document people, who state officials had identified for relocation as part of Operação Produção, boarding an airplane.

"The deputies of the Assembly of the City of Maputo analyzed 'Operação Produção' since the phase of voluntary inscription of the unproductives"

From Chapter 4

Figure 46. Francisco Munia, “Os deputados à Assembleia da Cidade de Maputo, analisaram a ‘Operação Produção’ desde a fase de inscrição voluntária de improdutivos” (“The deputies of the Assembly of the City of Maputo, analyzed ‘Operation Production’ since the phase of voluntary registration of the unproductives”). Tempo, No. 672, 28 Agosto 1983, 22, accessed through Biblioteca Nacional de Moçambique, Maputo, Mozambique and interlibrary loan at Bard College.

Fig. 47. An unidentified woman poses with her identity documents, an act that exposes the irregularities of bureaucratic protocols associated with Operação Produção and how state officials misidentified populations.

"There were cases of people that were stopped at the evacuation centers, possessing workers cards."

From Chapter 4

Figure 47. Danilo Guimarães, “Houve casos de pessoas que foram parar aos centros de evacuação, possuindo cartão de trabalho. Foram soltas” (“There were cases of people who were stopped at the evacuation centers, possessing the worker’s cards. They were released”). Tempo, No. 667, 24 Julho 1983, 18, accessed through Biblioteca Nacional de Moçambique, Maputo, Mozambique and interlibrary loan at Bard College.

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

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"Frelimo militants expose traitors"

"An aspect of the verification of houses in the barrio of Alto Maé"

Untitled photo by Danilo Guimarães

"To hear the opinion and the preoccupations of each evacuee was the preoccupation of the brigade of the Central Operation Command"

"The deputies of the Assembly of the City of Maputo analyzed 'Operação Produção' since the phase of voluntary inscription of the unproductives"

"There were cases of people that were stopped at the evacuation centers, possessing workers cards."

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

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