As fotografias da expedição portuguesa ao Muatiânvuo - 1884/88

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the Ethnographic Album of the Portuguese expedition to Muatianvua, potentate Lunda, inside Angola. The photographs were produced during the expedition, led by Major Henrique Dias de Carvalho, between 1884 and 1888. The article intends to place the photographic activity in the context of this expedition, in its various political and scientific dimensions as well as within the politics of the image and its visual rhetorics that were used in the colonial context. Given the wide use of photographs to produce the prints included in the extensive scientific work of Henrique Dias de Carvalho, we examine his methodological proposals in the field of ethnography. This article relies primarily on semiotic concepts, as well as in the theory and history of photography, the epistemology of science and in the research of this Expedition’s documentation and historical context. However, it must be read in the light of the discussions in Visual Culture on the images as political constructions and as constructions of the political. In fact, we show that no matter how vigorously Henrique Dias de Carvalho defended the importance that should be attached to the study of African cultures, and the respect for them, this defense was understood under an unquestioned colonial design: that of knowing in order to dominate.