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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | In Pursuit of a Chameleon: Early Ethnographic Photography from Angola in Context |
Author: | Heintze, Beatrix |
Year: | 1990 |
Periodical: | History in Africa |
Volume: | 17 |
Pages: | 131-156 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Angola |
Subjects: | anthropology photography history Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171810 |
Abstract: | In recent years early photographs from Africa have increasingly attracted the attention of historians and ethnologists. One of the countries to which least attention has been paid in this field is Angola. The present paper surveys the ethnographic photography from Angola of the period 1875-1940, using 'ethnography' in the sense in which it was understood during that period - as a description of 'uncivilized', 'native' African peoples and cultures. The ethnographic photography of the late 19th century depended on contemporary interests and theories, and it was necessarily characterized above all by anthropometric pictures of human beings and so-called type-photos. The type of ethnography that was characteristic for the decades following the military 'pacification' of Angola and the effective establishment of colonial rule was initiated essentially by the colonial administration, which it was designed to serve. Administrative officials and other officers of the colonial power, including military officers and missionaries, recorded the African inhabitants' 'usages and customs'. The 1930s were marked by several pieces of in-depth fieldwork, the results of which were presented in professional monographs. Ethnographic photography too was affected by this development; yet the reason for the dramatic change in the importance attached to it was that the ethnologists who worked in Angola happened to be from museums. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |