Photography and colonial teratology

Abstract

In the mid-20th century, Portuguese professor and anthropologist António de Almeida (1900-1984) carried out some missions in Angola. One of the topics discussed during his travels was macronymphy among women identified as “Bushwomen” by the Anthropobiological Mission of Angola (AMA). Based on a series of photographs by AMA, it seeks to analyse the violence of the photographic act on people in a colonial situation, as well as the reproduction of teratology around African alterity. It is concluded that the anthropological approach of António de Almeida was an offshoot of the colonial teratology built since the first reports in the travel literature about the so-called “Hot-tentots” and “Bushmen”. Although the decolonisation of visuality is the focus of this proposal, analysing a series of “scientific photographs” gave rise to a new reflection on pornography as a visual culture in colonial teratology.