This edited collection presents the first critical and historical overview of photography in Portuguese colonial Africa to an English-speaking audience. Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860¿1975 brings together sixteen scholars from interdisciplinary fields as varied as history, anthropology, art history, visual culture and museum studies, to consider some of the key aspects in the visual representation of the longest-lasting European colonial empire in the African continent. The chapters span over two centuries and cover five formerly colonial territories ¿ Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe ¿ deploying a range of methodologies to explore the multiple meanings and the contested uses of the photographic image across the realms of politics, science, culture and war. This book responds to a marked surge of international interest in the relationship between photography and colonialism, which has hitherto largely overlooked the Portuguese imperial context, by delivering the most recent scholarly findings to a broad readership.

Filipa Lowndes Vicente is a Researcher and Deputy Director at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa). She was a Visiting Professor at Brown University (2016) and at King's College, University of London (2015). Among her books are Other Orientalisms: India between Florence and Bombay 1860-1900, published in 2012, and, in 2014, the edited volume O Império da Visão. Fotografia no Contexto Colonial Português (1860-1960) [The Empire of Vision. Photography in the Portuguese Colonial Context (1860-1960)].

Afonso Dias Ramos is a Researcher at the Art History Institute, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST). He was a Visiting Scholar at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon (2020) and an Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, affiliated with Freie Universität Berlin (2019). He is the co-editor, with Tom Snow, of the book Activism (2023).   

Chapter 1. Caught on Camera: An Introduction to Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa.- Part I Charting the Empire: Knowledge, Control, Power.- Part I Charting the Empire: Knowledge, Control, Power.- Chapter 2. Photographing Tropical Plants in the Late Nineteenth Century: Scientific Practices and Botanical Knowledge Production.- Chapter 3. Stopping for the Camera: Photographs of the Portuguese Expedition to Báruè, Mozambique, 1902.- Chapter 4. Ethnographic Album of Angola: Overlaps Between Photography, Knowledge and Empire (1930s-1940s).- Chapter 5. An Africanist Photo-ethno-graphy in the Portuguese New State (1928-1974).- Chapter 6. To See Is to Know? Anthropological Differentiations on Portuguese Colonial Photography Through the Work of Mendes Correia.- Part II Showcasing the Empire: Propaganda, Media, Exhibitions.- Chapter 7. Visions of Wildlife and Hunting in the "Sportsmen's Paradise": Exploring Photography from the Mozambique Company's Archive.- Chapter 8. IndustrialLandscapes in Colonial Mozambique: Images from an Economic Magazine.- Chapter 9. To See, to Sell: The Role of the Photographic Image in Portuguese Colonial Exhibitions (1929-1940).- Chapter 10. Images of Angola and Mozambique in the Imperial Metropolis: Photographic Exhibitions Held at the Palácio Foz (1938-1960).- Chapter 11. Vision and violence. Black women's bodies on display (1900-1975).- Part III Holding the Empire: Political Violence, Labour, Struggle.- Chapter 12.Images That Kill: Counterinsurgency and Photography in Angola Circa 1961.- Chapter 13. Colonial War/Liberation Struggle in Guinea Bissau: From Personal Photographs to Public Silences.- Chapter 14. Curating the Past: Memory, History, and Private Photographs of the Portuguese Colonial Wars.- Chapter 15. Photographic Colonial Agency: The Work of Agostiniano de Oliveira at the Diamang (1948-1966).- Chapter 16. 'Our Nightly Bread': Women and the City in Ricardo Rangel's Photographs of Lourenço Marques, Mozambique (1950s-1960s)./