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

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

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

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."

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"

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"

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

Fig. 5. Portuguese troops in Northern Mozambique attending to an injured combatant.

Untitled photo by unknown photographer, 1961-1975

Fig. 6. Portuguese soldiers reading a translated version of Mikhail Sholokhov’s book They fought for their country,” a visual reference to the range of images and texts that Portuguese soldiers actively consumed.

Untitled photo by S.J. McIntosh

Fig. 7. An example of the photographs that Portuguese soldiers stationed in Mozambique took and used local commercial studios to print before submitting them for publication in the daily newspaper Noticias.

Page Excerpt of "Coluna em Marcha," August 11, 1973

Fig. 8. The newspaper insert A Coluna em Marcha frequently featured halftones, like this one, that showed civil populations photographing Portuguese soldiers.

Page Excerpt of "Coluna em Marcha," May 12, 1973

Fig. 9. The photograph on the propaganda flyer, which the Portuguese military circulated, displays a person who abandoned the opposing army Frelimo along with the shadows of Portuguese soldiers.

Mi Biti Cheia

Fig. 10. Photograph of press-photographer Ricardo Rangel standing alongside representatives of the colonial state at an exhibition of the very same photographs that the colonial state had censored.

"No auditoria de arte: O governador do distrito Inaugurou a exposição de Ricardo Rangel" ("In the auditorium of art: The district governor inaugerates an exhibition of Ricardo Rangel")

Fig. 11. An example of the hand-produced propaganda that Frelimo circulated, and that the Portuguese military collected as part of its efforts to integrate photography in its counter-insurgency military tactics.

Untitled page

Fig. 12. Illustrated propaganda that portrayed supposed abuses committed by Frelimo’s military as a way of encouraging populations to defect to the side of Portugal.

Relátorios de acção psicologica

Fig. 13. Photograph of inside an airplane of the sound equipment that the Portuguese military used when disseminating illustrated propaganda in Frelimo-occupied areas.

"Moçambique: O equipamento do som montado ao Dakota por a diffusão da mensagem ao população e os os guerrilheiros" ("Mozambique: Sound equipmet mounted to the Dakota for the diffusion of the message to the population and soliers")

Fig. 14. A stamp consisting of an outline of Mozambique imposed on the flag of Portugal with the text “Mozambique is only Mozambique because it is Portugal” designed to dispel any notion of separation between the metropole and colony.

"Moçambique só e Moçambique porque é Portugal" ("Mozambique is only Mozambique because it is Portugal")--Relátorio Da Missão

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

Fig. 16. Photograph of Frelimo military leaders analyzing the headshots of unidentified individuals.

Untitled photo, Frente da Libertação de Moçambique 1

Fig. 17. Photograph displays the types of images that, on the one hand, Frelimo leaders stood in front of, and, on the other hand, that soldiers and populations living in the liberation viewed of Frelimo leaders during military and political training.

Untitled photo, Frente da Libertação de Moçambique 2

Fig. 18. A photograph of an armed person living in Frelimo’s liberated areas using a manual printer donated by one of Frelimo’s allies.

Untitled photo, Frente da Libertação de Moçambique 3

Fig. 19. The illustrated and multi-lingual propaganda that Portugal’s military produced to give the perception of a divided Frelimo and to encourage troop desertions.

Coleção de Panfletos

Fig. 20. Frelimo photographer José Soares pictures local Mozambican populations in the liberated zones supporting Frelimo troops with food donations.

Untitled,Cabo Delgado