Abstract
In 1907, a Portuguese military expedition was sent to Angola to subdue the Kwamato. Two photographers accompanied the troops and photographed moments of rest, training, and combat. It was the first Portuguese photographic reportage of war. This article analyses a group of photographs of the Kwamato campaign as an example of photography of war. Using a methodology based on discourse analysis in journalism, this article illustrates how photography represented colonial warfare as part of a narrative of imperial dominance where modern technology was crucial, and how this representation was presented and normalised to the Portuguese mainland public in the illustrated press.
Introduction*
In June 1908, Portuguese magazine Illustração Portugueza published the last group of photographs of a victorious Portuguese military campaign organised one year before against the Kwamato in the south of Angola. During the previous six months, the magazine bombarded its audience with a selection of dozens of images taken by two photographers that accompanied the troops in Angola. It was the first time that a Portuguese military expedition was covered by photography.1
This article analyses this photographic corpus, including those images that were published in the press, to answer the following research questions: firstly, how was colonial warfare represented with photography? Secondly, what was the relevance of photography for the Portuguese colonial project? Finally, how were those representations transmitted to the population in the mainland? Under the conceptual umbrella of photography of war, this article uses the methodology of discourse analysis in journalistic texts (described in section 1 below) to show that the photographs of the Kwamato campaign added to the ideas of Portugal as an imperial nation and of Angola as a suitable place for Portuguese citizens to dwell. The analysis accompanies different stages of the conflict from the preparation towards the battles (section 2), to the engagement with the enemy (section 3), and the victory of the Portuguese troops (section 4). Section 5 details the role of the illustrated press to disseminate the photographs taken in Angola and the message, representations, and ideologies they created. By doing so, this article contributes to the discussion about photography of war and the relationship between photography and colonialism/imperialism.
The photographs of the Kwamato campaign constitute an invaluable historical collection as the first example of Portuguese photography of war. Additionally, considering that there was not a sustained tradition of depicting war in the Portuguese press (the Portuguese did not witness war in their mainland territory for more than seventy years), the impact of these photographs was arguably great. What is more, these images illustrate the efforts of a second-rank imperial nation to show other colonial powers its merits to rule overseas territories.
For centuries, Portugal relied on its historical rights, as the first Europeans to arrive in Southern Africa, to claim sovereignty over its colonies. That privilege was being challenged since the Berlin Conference (1884–1885) that determined that imperial powers were entitled to colonial territories only if they had effective occupation and capability to civilise, that is, to impose the European way of living upon Africa’s populations and landscapes.2 Portugal, “half-senile and three-quarters bankrupt, hoarding her ancient possessions in Africa, Angola and Mozambique, more out of pride than of any hope of profit”,3 struggled to keep its spot in the group of imperial nations.
In the early 20th century, in the south of Angola, Portuguese rule was being challenged by the local peoples and by Germany. Although Portuguese presence in the region dated to the 15th century, when navigator Diogo Cão arrived in Cabo Negro, the colonisation of the territory began three and a half centuries later, when the first colonists settled in the coast. In the 1870s, Portuguese and Boer settlers explored the Huíla plateau in the hinterland and founded the cities of São Januário (present-day Humpata) and Sá da Bandeira (Lubango – figure 1). The European expansion was met with hostility. Portuguese authorities responded with the intensification of Catholic missionisation, the construction of forts, and the organisation of military expeditions.4
Map of Angola, showing the area of conflict between the Portuguese and the Kwamato (the grey ellipse in the bottom)
Citation: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 45, 1 (2025) ; 10.1163/24683302-bja10056
source: google maps and author’s own elaborationIn the early 1900s, the occupation of the territory by the Portuguese and the resistance of the local populations grew in aggressiveness. In 1904, the governor of Huíla, João Maria Aguiar, sent a 2,000-strong force to the left bank of the Cunene River to occupy the Kwanyama territory, passing by Kwamato lands. During the march, a column of 500 officers and soldiers was ambushed. More than 300 men were killed, and the entire party retreated to Humbe.5 News of the humiliating beating soon reached the colonial authorities in Lisbon and fuelled the military rhetoric. A swift military response was demanded to restore Portuguese pride and rule in the territory,6 and to “show other nations that we are still the descendants of the first Portuguese discoverers”, as one of the soldiers enlisted in the campaign put it.7 Internally, it was the monarchic regime itself that was at stake, contested since the yielding to the British Ultimatum of 1890 that demanded that Portuguese forces withdrew from the territories between Angola and Mozambique including Mashonaland, Matabeleland, and the Shire-Nyasa region (present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia and a large part of Malawi).8
In 1905, the new governor of Huíla, Alves Roçadas, took steps to avenge the humiliation inflicted on the Portuguese army. With an overall budget of 1900 contos,9 it was the first Portuguese military campaign in Africa which was planned methodically and in detail.10 Two years later, in August, an expedition of 2,300 men (Portuguese, Boer, and African) armed with 1,600 rifles, an unknown number of horses, 44 oxcarts, ten cannons and four machineguns departed from Lisbon, arrived in Moçâmedes, and were transported by train to the base of the Chela range.11 From there, the troops led by Alves Roçadas marched towards the Kwamato territory.12 Six weeks later, the Portuguese conquered the embalas (settlements) of the Kwamato leaders (Sihetekela and Chaúla)13 and imposed their rule on the region. By December, the troops were back in Lisbon, where they were acclaimed by King and country as national heroes.14
The troops were accompanied by two photographers (Veloso de Castro and Marino Pollatos)15 who recorded different instants of the expedition, since its departure from Lisbon to the return to the mainland, including marches, moments of leisure and training, and episodes of fighting.
These photographs enabled viewers in the mainland to view the colony and to testify the recovery of national dignity,16 and proved to other colonial nations the Portuguese capabilities to rule the territory.
A substantial part of these images was published in the Portuguese illustrated press, namely the magazines Occidente and Illustração Portugueza. The former was published thrice a month since the late 1880s, while the latter was published weekly since 1903. Both circulated nationwide, with circulation figures ranging at 25,000 copies per week.17 Their price was steep (in 1908, an annual subscription cost 3,800 réis in the case of Occidente and 4,800 réis in the case of Illustração Portugueza),18 but affordable to many. As a term of comparison, farmhands wages oscillated between 228 and 500 réis per day and industrial workers earned between 380 and 600 réis per day.19 Additionally, it was customary for a person to buy a copy and share its contents with larger groups in the community.20 This practice circumvented the general illiteracy of the Portuguese population (about 70 percent of the population did not know how to read or write).21 Photography itself was a powerful tool to disseminate information amongst the illiterate, considering that observing an image does not require any special skills.22
1 Photography of War and How to Analyse It
Although war photography as a genre developed after the First World War, there are many examples of collections of photography of war before that conflict.23 Historically, the first photographs of war were taken during the Second Sikh War (1848–1849) and the Second Burma War (1852–1853), although the Crimean War (1853–1856) is generally considered the first conflict to be recorded by photography.24 These photographs offered a romantic representation of war and did not show the horrors of battle.25 It was during the Second Opium War (1856–1860), the American Civil War (1861–1865), and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) that photographers captured more gruesome details of warfare.26
The classic photograph of war is the dramatic, black and white image of the combat zone; however, other moments may be considered photographs of war: armed conflicts and its consequences over people, infrastructure, and landscape; daily military life before and after combat; or manoeuvres in battle.27 In war, only a small percentage of time is spent in combat; most of the time is occupied with routine activities. Collections of photographs of war usually reflect this division,28 considering that photographing scenes of combat is more difficult and dangerous. Moreover, until the late 19th century, the low shutter speeds of cameras and the limited sensitivity to light did not allow to shoot movement. In the early 20th century, developments in cameras, shutter speeds, and film had made possible to photograph moving persons and objects.29
Photography of war is characterised by its focus on the figure of the soldier (especially, but not limited to, military leaders) and its realism.30 It may serve diverse goals: to persuade, recruit, survey, spy, obtain financial gain, rule, conquer, remember, or reflect.31 In the colonial context, it cannot be dissociated from the imperial agendas of domination of which photography was a fundamental tool.32 Most images of conflict are meant for a visual economy where the war photographer is the supplier and wider audiences who crave for photographs of action are the consumers.33 It is a “distillation of battle marketed for home consumption”.34
The 465 photographs taken by Veloso de Castro (369)35 and Marino Pollatos (96)36 captured different aspects of the military operation undertaken against the Kwamato: march towards the battlefield, construction of infrastructure (camps, forts, watchtowers), sundry exercises, leisure moments, fighting scenes, treatment of the wounded, prisoners of war, interaction with the defeated, and the celebration of the victors.
Since its invention, photography was considered an objective instrument that depicted reality as reality was.37 It offered the certainty of “having been there”, as Roland Barthes put it.38 Photographs of war had an additional legitimisation provided by the self-endangerment of the photographer, and by the excitement motivated by the horror that simultaneously repelled and enticed the observer.39 In the press, since the development of halftone printing in the late 19th century, photography lent truth-value to the accounts of war.40
Nonetheless, photography did not record reality objectively; contrariwise, it was a profoundly subjective practice, considering the weight of the photographer’s decisions regarding the setting, the characters, the angle, and the vantage point.41 As a subjective practice accepted as an objective product, photography became a powerful tool to create landscapes, narratives, representations, and ideologies.42 In the case of colonial warfare, it offered one-sided information and therefore was a powerful medium of propaganda.43 For these reasons, the analysis of photographs of war should not focus on what they depict, but on the meanings they create.44
The first step is to understand the work of the war photographer: his/her status (army officer, professional photographer, private photographer), equipment, motivations, accessibility to the war setting, control over the stages that are being photographed, dangers and risks faced while shooting, and accessibility to broader channels of publication.45
In the case of the Kwamato campaign, the photographers were taken by an army officer (Veloso de Castro) and a civilian (Marino Pollatos, a Greek photographer).46 The equipment they used is unknown. Veloso de Castro sought to provide an accurate view of the war, whereas Marino Pollatos was likely a commercial photographer who sought to profit from the photographs of the campaign.47 Both had broad access to the soldiers, infrastructure, and movements of the troops and a high degree of control over the composition of the scenes they photographed.48 Both faced the same risks as the soldiers – Veloso de Castro was hit by a bullet in one clash with the Kwamato.49 Both had easy access to the illustrated press and to print shops that published their works.
To arrive at the representations created, Roland Barthes’ classical distinction between the signifier/denoted message (the object[s]/character[s] portrayed), the signified/connoted message (the message that is carried out), and the sign (the myth created by the repetition of signifieds) was used.50 To operate this distinction, the methodology suggested by Márcia Benetti was used and the images were divided in categories with similar signifiers, after performing a systematic observation of the collection; subsequently, representative images of each category were selected and examined.51
Photography is often accompanied by written sources that inform about its expected goals and therefore contribute to its interpretation.52 The most immediate textual data is the caption accompanying the image that instantly enhances a detail, directs the gaze of the observer towards it, and contributes to define the signifier and the denoted message in each image.53 In the case of the collection of images of the Kwamato war, the accounts written by the commanding officers of the expedition,54 by one of the photographers of the campaign,55 and the reports published in the illustrated press were also analysed.
Anne Tucker, Will Michels, and Nathalie Zelt offer a list of moments in war that may serve as categories to organise collections of war photography: infrastructure and logistic support; march and reconnaissance; medical acts; combat; destruction of enemy infrastructure; imprisonment, questioning or execution of enemy soldiers; respite of the combatants; grievance of the fallen; peace/surrendering ceremonies; and celebration of the victors.56 Borrowing from this distinction, this article follows the classification scheme shown in table 1. Visual analysis of the collection, identifying the denoted message, was conducted to distribute the photographs by each category. This classification can be problematic, considering its subjectiveness, but this is an unavoidable issue in photographic analysis if we remember that photographs constitute messages without a code that are not prone to straightforward interpretations.57 On the other hand, this scheme offers a model that allows comparison across other collections.
Most photographs in the collection do not depict moments of conflict, but instants of preparation to war, troops resting, and details of the human and geographic landscape of the south of Angola. A substantial number of images of battle may also be found. The aftermath of the campaign is well illustrated too, with photographs of wounded being treated, prisoners, and ceremonies celebrating the victory and the fallen soldiers.
2 Preparing for and Returning from Battle
Both Veloso de Castro and Marino Pollatos offered assorted perspectives of the routine of the Portuguese expedition before and after engaging the Kwamato, including exercises of the troops, the trekking towards the territory of the Kwamato, and the construction of supporting infrastructure. Those who looked at the photographs could observe varied signifiers like the transportation of men and equipment by railway, the soldiers bivouacking, scouts on lookout points, the construction and use of bridges across rivers, the building of strongholds (forts Aucongo, Damequero, and especially fort Roçadas, named after the commander of the expedition, that served as headquarters), quartermasters butchering oxen to feed the troops, the machinery and weaponry utilised during the expedition, or soldiers resting.
Daniel Foliard and Beatriz Pichel suggest that photographing menial tasks constituted an emotional investment for combatants through which they tamed the hostile surroundings and turned it into a domestic space. Photography showed a colonial landscape gradually pacified and protected from chaos. This was also an investment for civilians in the mainland, showing that dwelling in the colonies was possible.58
As in other similar collections – as pointed out by Laurent Henninger59 – photographers of the Kwamato campaign portray the soldiers in military uniforms, holding a weapon, seeking to underscore their courage and technical prowess. In the photographs of senior officers, the features that are emphasised are their leadership and strategic skills.
Hélène Puiseux argues that military technology and the technical expertise of the troops was fetishized in the photographs of steamboats, cannons, rifles, or machine guns.60 Something similar is noted on the photographs of the Kwamato campaign, which were shown as proofs of an alleged civilisational superiority of the Portuguese – war was another stage to claim Western superiority and to illustrate the Portuguese civilising mission.61 In this vein, one report of the campaign claims that a steamboat in the Cunene River caused a vivid impression on the Kwamato. Its captain “often saw the Kwamato in the margins gazing the boat, not daring to attack it. One time, he needed to disembark to cut wood for fuel and he blew the horn to drive the Kwamato off. The formula was effective. At the first whistle they fled aghast, allowing the garrison to harvest the firewood calmly”.62 Similarly, images of the railway transporting the troops illustrated the technical prowess of Portugal as an imperial nation and that the investment made in the track was serving its purposes.63
The strongholds and other infrastructure built by the troops (figure 2) were also reminders of the ingenuity of Portuguese military engineers, which was crucial for the advancement of troops and for the imposition of Portuguese rule. This resonates with similar findings made by Rui Assubuji in a study about photography of military campaigns in Mozambique.64
A general view of Fort Roçadas (translation from the Portuguese caption in the photograph: “Vista geral do Forte Roçadas”).
Citation: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 45, 1 (2025) ; 10.1163/24683302-bja10056
source: marino pollatos, vista geral do forte roçadas, 1907, 04498.006.043.001, casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=04498.006.043.001, fmsWhat is more, bridges across rivers (like the floating bridge over the Cunene River) or fortifications in strategic points represented the deployment of an organisational network indispensable for the colonisation of the south of Angola. The geometrical forms of the forts’ walls and the disposition of the tents hinted at orderliness, contrasting with the unruliness of the surrounding landscape. The inclusion of national symbols in the photographs (namely the flag of the Portuguese ruling house of Bragança) contributed to the Portugalisation of the territory,65 to promote patriotism, and to foster an imagined national community – like in war contexts in France and Britain, as argued by Beatriz Pichel and John Taylor.66 Photographs of these military infrastructure and elements confirmed the alteration of the Angolan panorama and the creation of a civilised landscape.
In the same respect, the orderly march and military posture of the Portuguese troops, besides emphasising the gallantry of the soldiers,67 contrasted with the disordered amalgamation of black enemy bodies (see below), which conveyed the message of order being imposed on the perceived chaos of Angola.
Photographs of the marching troops illustrated different views of the landscape of the south of Angola that had meanings beyond the mere depiction of nature. Some images focused entirely on the territory (excluding human figures), like rivers, huge trees, woods, cattle, and springs. This has a double interpretation. On the one hand, the photographer included those landforms to enhance the difficulties posed to the march of the Portuguese soldiers – a detail that can also be observed on photographs of military campaigns in Mozambique.68 On the other hand, the evocation of the natural sublime was intentionally done to distract from the hellish reality of war – as also noted by Jeff Rosenheim in the photographs that illustrated the American Civil War.69 Finally, Veloso de Castro and Marino Pollatos sought to advertise the exoticism of the African landscape amongst the mainland audiences, while also evidencing the replication of the Portuguese lifestyle in Angola with photographs of the troops in the town of Sá da Bandeira. Both perspectives served the same purpose and emotional investment of promoting migration to the colony (most Portuguese emigrants preferred to move to Brazil),70 which was indispensable for the colonial project. The illustrated press in the mainland often used colonial photography to endorse the colonies.71
Something similar may be said about the multiple images of officers and soldiers relaxing. Besides smoothing the visual representations of war, these pictures evinced the spirit of comradeship amongst the troops (which included divisions of African soldiers).72 The photographs were developed during the campaign, creating moments for the soldiers to unwind. Additionally, they gave visibility to those who otherwise would be invisible, contributing to motivate the men – a detail Beatriz Pichel and Jeff Rosenheim also found in the collections of the First World War and the American Civil War.73 Finally, these images hinted at the possibility of leisure in a land identified with lawlessness, unsafeness, and marauders rule. David Lima, one of the officers of the campaign, illustrated this well when he wrote that “Chibia [a town in South Angola] may be compared to a town in Portugal”.74
3 Engaging the Kwamato
The 52 photographs of combat do not illustrate obvious instants of battle. Only a few photographs portray soldiers firing their rifles in a display of technological prowess that hinted at the civilising mission of the Portuguese. Veloso de Castro argued how the Portuguese “worked as always in favour of civilisation, instilling – at gunpoint, that’s true, but forced by the circumstances – the good doctrine to the heart of the peoples who in the remote lands of Africa live in disorderliness, and tenaciously oppose with ignorance and savagery our beneficial and civilising action”.75
In the pictures of the Kwamato campaign, creative captions (especially in the illustrated press) were crucial to enhance the imagination of the observers and the feeling of danger, by adding that the photographs were taken under enemy fire – replicating a practice that Daniel Foliard also found in photographs of the French colonial empire.76 Otherwise, the images would pass as regular marches or exercises. The photographs (and associated texts) placed the viewers within the conflict and offered an unprecedented glimpse of the war waged by Portuguese troops.
A noticeable detail in this group of images is the absence of the Kwamato, which does not surprise, considering that they waged guerrilla warfare, taunting the Portuguese soldiers by night, and engaging them in firefights by day.77 That absence was compensated by textual depictions (and by descriptions of the harshness of the march to enhance the merits of the Portuguese troops).78 Narratives of the officers of the campaign and news pieces in the press underscored the overwhelming numbers of the Kwamato warriors, claiming that they ranged between 15,000 to 26,000 men, 3,000 to 10,000 of which armed with Martini-Henry, Mauser, Colt, Snider-Enfield, Winchester, and Kropatschek rifles. They were considered agile, strong, fierce, intelligent, proud, and warlike, but also primitive, terrifying, treacherous, and untrustworthy, “hardly tameable by the influence of civilisation”.79 The demonisation of the enemy is usually a part of the strategy to justify military actions and the righteousness of war.80
This information added an extra layer of representation to the photographs and emphasised the tension of the moment that the camera failed to translate accurately. Photography lent the authority of an eyewitness to the rhetoric, and it was the perfect medium to generate the myth of danger that fascinated viewers,81 but in this case it also borrowed credibility from the written narratives.
When the Portuguese army took the embalas of the Kwamato chiefs, photography registered those moments in 27 clichés. A few of them illustrate the destruction of palisades or the burning of some buildings, a common tactic used by the Portuguese troops.82 In figure 3, the column of smoke, central in the picture, represented the victory of the Portuguese, the punishment on the Kwamato, and the avengement of the military disaster of 1904.
The Portuguese army sets a Kwamato settlement ablaze.
Citation: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 45, 1 (2025) ; 10.1163/24683302-bja10056
source: veloso de castro, marcha sobre o mogogo, 1907, pt/ahm/fe/cave/vc/a10/1137, ahm-exercito.defesa.gov.pt/details?id=160026, caveThese photographs were taken to attest the victory of the Portuguese forces, to illustrate the moment when the Portuguese replaced the Kwamato as rulers of the territory, and to prove that the colonial project was successful. Álvaro Penalva, a Portuguese journalist of the beginning of the 20th century, recounts that the entrance in the embalas was cheered with bottles of champagne “popping joyfully, as if hailing the arrival of civilisation to the land of the Kwamato”.83
In some images, the captions underscored that some infrastructure had been abandoned by fleeing Kwamato. As Robert Frank has shown, this is an important detail in war photography that highlighted the victory of the combatants and the defeat of the enemy.84
The exclamation points of the campaign were the destruction of the Kwamato settlements.85 Visually, the columns of smoke, or the pieces of wood that once formed stockades heaped in shapeless piles illustrated what had been there but no more – a detail usually found in war photography, as Ulrich Keller has illustrated in a study of the imagery of the Crimean War.86 This visual composition translated to the triumph of the Portuguese troops and the disarray of the opponents. Images of cattle taken from the Kwamato and narratives adding that over the ashes the soldiers unfurled the Portuguese flag officialised the change of rule in the territory.87
The brawls with the Kwamato left a trail of wounded in the Portuguese army. Veloso de Castro captured some of the moments when the injured were receiving medical treatment. Images of the wounded, maimed, and dead are customary in war photography.88 Most of Veloso de Castro’s images depict light or routine care of the soldiers, but in some it is possible to observe more serious injuries, while in others the bodies of dead soldiers laying on the ground are visible. Arguably the most pungent photograph shows a soldier restrained by a few comrades while two others prepare to amputate his leg in an improvised litter (figure 4), illustrating one of the most severe corporeal experiences combatants could withstand. The textual accounts are equally graphic, describing the dire conditions of the medical facilities, the absence of water to clean the wounded, or the lack of chloroform to anaesthetise the soldiers during surgeries.89 Both channels of communication (visual and written) illustrate the suffering undertaken by the soldiers involved in the campaigns, and hence underscore their dedication, sacrifice, and heroism, crucial to the construction of the Empire.90
Leg amputation of a soldier wounded in battle. Handwritten caption translates to: “A rudimentary surgery – amputation of a leg using the most primitive processes” (“Cirurgia rudimentar – amputação d’uma perna, pelos processos mais primitivos”)
Citation: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 45, 1 (2025) ; 10.1163/24683302-bja10056
source: illustração portugueza, 4:97 (1907), p. 869.4 Submission of the Kwamato and Return to Portugal
It was only after the territory was under Portuguese control that Veloso de Castro and his comrades truly contacted the Kwamato. Cátia Costa claims that Castro’s photographs of the Kwamato reveal a genuine ethnographic interest in knowing the Other and his exoticness.91 Hugo Pereira offers that his main concern was to underscore a perceived primitivism of the Kwamato to justify the Portuguese civilising mission in Angola,92 considering that the photographs illustrate the primitive man rather than the noble savage, to paraphrase Hayden White.93 On a different note, the 2019 photodocumentary by Billy Woodberry, A Story from Africa, composed of the same photographs analysed in this article, underpins the violence that characterised the European occupation of Africa.
Pictures of Kwamato individuals may be classified as trophy photographs exposing the defeated, humiliated or in grisly details, as attribute of power of the assailant and an accomplice of the military violence.94
The troops were clearly excited with the prospect of knowing the Kwamato. Veloso de Castro recalls this excitement when a group of scouts dragged one to the encampment: “finally we were going to meet one Kwamato, one of our enemies, and we could get out of him interesting information!”. However, the disillusionment was as great as the anticipation: “it was just a poor old hag, repulsive, paralytic, blind, miserable […], stricken with terror […] fearing that we were going to carve her up”.95
The conquest of the embalas opened the doors of the world of the Kwamato (largely unknown in Portugal) to the troops. Photography opened windows for those in the mainland to see the way of life of the Kwamato (both warriors and civilians), although these were narrow and biased windows that met pre-representations of Africans as primitive and unruly rebels. As occurred in other conflicts, photography was used to confirm stereotypes rather than to inform accurately about the enemy.96 Together with the textual descriptions, photography created a demeaning and racist narrative that characterised the Kwamato as a backward people, living in rudimentary huts, with strange mores, lacking Western technology, who would benefit from the civilisation brought by the Portuguese presence. The racist and dehumanised vision of the Kwamato also contributed to justify the war in its aftermath – a role that photography played well in other wars.97 One of the participants in the campaign, David Lima, mentioned how “amongst that people, only a couple wear clothes, because the usual garment is the loin-cloth – a piece of old burlap or some animal skin – wrapped around the waist. Women dress in the same manner, and they grease their hair with some sort of fat, heaping it in the shape of a pinecone. They are a wretched bunch! The fat, under the sun, drips down their body, making it shine! We laughed our heads off!”.98 The traditional drumming of the Kwamato was also a matter of laughter for the soldier, as were other of their traits and their alleged addiction to alcohol, which illustrates his condescending view of the Africans.99
Photography created enemies but it also created allies. It was the case of the Kwamato guide Calipalula, who escorted the Portuguese troops. Calipalula could very well be considered a traitor of his own kind, but both the photographs of the campaign and the narratives of the Portuguese officers painted him in a different light, as a friend of Portugal. Standing at 6’ 6’’ tall (2 m), he is easily spottable in the photographs, with his large hat and a yellow badge in the front. The descriptions of the campaign underscore his knowledge of the territory, his intelligence, his ability to adapt to the European lifestyle, his will to put an end to the “barbaric customs” of his people (Veloso de Castro mentions human sacrifices, for instance) and to cooperate with the Portuguese, and his role as go-between in the attempts to contact the Kwamato. They add his personal history: a Kwamato nobleman who aspired to lead his people, but who was banished by the ruling soba (chief), Calipalula fled to the Portuguese-ruled territory, where he was convinced to guide an army towards the lands of the Kwamato. In exchange, the Portuguese promised to make him the new soba.100 In the end, Calipalula met an unfortunate fate. When the Portuguese appointed him as the new soba, his countrymen refused his chieftain. According to the reports of the Portuguese troops, when a new chief was instated, it was customary to present him with a young woman, but Calipalula was offered an old hag. Unable to cope with the rejection of his people and the regret for helping the invaders, Calipalula shot himself shortly after. There are no images of Calipalula after his death, which illustrates how in the mainland the life of the Other is cheap.101
Another relevant moment of the interaction between belligerents is materialised in photographs of prisoners of war.102 In Veloso de Castro’s collection we can distinguish between photographs of individuals and group images. The former relates to an episode of the capture of a Kwamato fighter who wore the suspenders and a necklace of watch mechanisms that belonged to the Portuguese soldiers killed in 1904. Castro considered him a conceited man, a trace that he captured in his pictures.103
More relevant are the photographs of groups of prisoners that depict the submission of the enemy. In these images, the Kwamato are shown in a fused mass and in submissive positions (crouched, sitting down, or marching before Portuguese officers), but shackleless. This last detail supports the narrative of the fair treatment of prisoners by the Portuguese troops, who claimed that the goal of the campaign was not to destroy the Kwamato, but to protect them. Here war was represented as humane and civilised.104
This narrative is countered by excerpts of the accounts of the conflict. In a passage of his book, David Lima states that after the troops left, “the little Negroes should remain terrified that the government did not forget about them”.105 One photograph of the collection (figure 5) illustrates this well, showing a group of Kwamato prisoners chained by the neck under the supervision of a Portuguese officer (captain Teixeira Pinto). Three different yet interwoven layers are discernible.
A group of Kwamato prisoners, chained by the neck, overseen by Captain Teixeira Pinto and his African subordinates. Handwritten caption translates to: “Prisoners captured by captain Pinto, during an attack on the enemy” (“Prisioneiros feitos pelo capitão Pinto, n’uma sortida feita ao inimigo”).
Citation: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 45, 1 (2025) ; 10.1163/24683302-bja10056
source: veloso de castro, prisioneiros cuamatas agrilhoados, feitos por teixeira pinto na sequência da ofensiva de alves roçadas junto ao rio cunene, 1907, 04498.006.019.001, casacomum.org/cc/visualizador?pasta=04498.006.019.001, fms.The first layer includes the Kwamato captives. Portrayed half-naked, covered in dust, and amalgamated in random positions (kneeled, crouched in one leg, sitting down) in a misshapen mass, they illustrate the European colonial representation of Africans as a generic reality of backward and savage peoples.106 What is more, the chains around the neck of the captives, the meek demeanour of the Kwamato, and their position looking upwards to the camera (whereas the gaze of Teixeira Pinto and his African subordinates are on the same level as the photographer) illustrate the uneven relationship of power between the colonisers and the colonised.
The second layer of representation includes the 29 African soldiers of the sixth auxiliary company of the Portuguese army. They are shown in an orderly stance, cleaner, wearing similar uniforms, and holding their rifles on their right hands. The rifles and bullet belts around the soldiers’ chests are a symbol of power, specifically of technological power. The inclusion of Africans in the army and in the photographs could be interpreted as a sign of military weakness – adding to the argument that the Portuguese army was so undermanned that it had to rely on local conscripts. Inversely, in the Portuguese context, these images supported the colonial narrative that the Portuguese had a unique rapport with the colonised.107 Pictured side by side with the Kwamato prisoners, the African soldiers are portrayed as a proof of the success of the civilising mission of the Portuguese.
Finally, in the third layer, there is Teixeira Pinto, who takes the preeminent spot of the photograph, by standing in the centre with his spotless white hat and thick beard. The officer’s position is itself another manifestation of power, as the only white person discernible in the picture, standing at its centre, in a dominant position, controlling the group, albeit totally outnumbered by the black figures. The caption, handwritten in the photograph, adds to the centrality of Pinto, claiming that he was central to the capture of the Kwamato foes, denying any relevance to his African subordinates.108
Combined, these three layers build a hierarchy of domination and uneven power in the specific context of the campaign but also in the larger context of the colonisation of Angola, with Teixeira Pinto (and by extension the Portuguese) sitting in the top of the chain, ruling over the African characters caught in the picture.
The affirmation of domination by the Portuguese troops was stressed by the multiple images of ceremonies of vassalage. These events repaired the shocking humiliation of the 1904 massacre and through photography became “cathartic and therapeutic” for Portuguese audiences.109 Images of the vassalage showed Portuguese officers and Cambungo Popiene, the new soba, appointed by them, signing a peace treaty recognising Portuguese rule. Popiene is given the flag of Portugal and agrees to surrender his weapons and 300 oxen per year to the Portuguese authorities. They are accompanied by other soldiers who served as witnesses of the pact. The soba is cladding European garments, thus confirming his allegiance to the new rulers.110 This was followed by groups of Kwamato presenting themselves to the victorious leader, captain Alves Roçadas.111
The return of the campaign to Portugal was marked by several ceremonies that honoured the fallen and paid tribute to the victors. Collections of photography of war usually depict such events,112 but the images of the Kwamato campaign have a specificity. While marching back to Sá da Bandeira, the troops passed by the location of the 1904 massacre. In that occasion, the soldiers sought, gathered, and photographed the remains and gear of their fallen comrades (figure 6). These images were published in the press and provided the audiences in the mainland an occasion to see death in war. Moreover, the macabre in the photograph reinforced the representation of savagery associated with Africans. As pointed out by different authors, photographs of the dead boosted morale and contributed to the creation of a model of a universal, long-lasting, and brave identity that could inspire others to join the military and fight for the motherland.113 In the Portuguese case, photography could motivate others in the mainland to pursue the pacification campaigns of the colonial project.
A pile of bones of the soldiers killed in 1904. The handwritten caption inscribed in the photograph translates to: “Portuguese! Attention! Behold the bones of those who perished there! They did their duty; you know how to do yours!! (Pesca-Rãs)” (“Portugueses! Sentido! … aqui tendes reúnidas as ossadas dos que lá ficaram! [illegible words] Elles cumpriram o seu dever, sabei vós cumprir o vosso!! (Pesca-rãs)”)
Citation: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 45, 1 (2025) ; 10.1163/24683302-bja10056
source: illustração portugueza, 5:119 (1908), p. 690.Furthermore, photography reinforced the distinction between our soldiers, who died in the line of duty, and those of the enemy, nefarious and rebel, thus justifying future repressions.114 The remains were given a proper burial and the sanctity of a Catholic mass that provide closure to national pride.
Thereafter the troops resumed their march to Lubango, and thence to Moçâmedes, where they boarded a ship towards Lisbon. In each of these locations, Alves Roçadas and his men were welcomed as heroes. The photographs of the events rose them to the condition of national heroes.
5 The Role of the Illustrated Press
Photography turned war into a cultural product sought by paying observers that grew increasingly addicted to the visual sensations provided by photographs. The illustrated press was crucial to satisfy this need and to make the representations of war accessible to the public. Photography was accepted as a tool that represented reality objectively. In the press, it reinforced the idea that news occurred naturally. It lent authenticity to journalism, and it valorised its message (often imbued with moral and ethical values) as an accurate witness of different events.115
The Portuguese illustrated press shared the messages and the myths mentioned before in much larger audiences. Considering the circulation figures, the range of distribution and the habit of sharing copies in larger groups, it is safe to assume that the pictures of the Kwamato campaign were seen by a large part of the Portuguese population. The way how images were selected ordered and presented in sequence in the pages of the illustrated magazines created the illusion of action and of “having been there”. The Portuguese readers became spectators who could observe the ongoing war in the safety of the mainland – as so many others did in other countries.116 On a regular basis, the illustrated press reiterated and accumulated representations about the courage and sacrifice of the Portuguese troops and the savagery and backwardness of the Kwamato, bringing its readers together in national interpretive communities with common vision about the war in the south of Angola.117 Simultaneously, it offered evidence of Portugal’s successful imperial undertakings. Rui Assubuji argues that the diffusion of photographs of military expeditions in Mozambique depicted war as a photographic event, “organized for the sake of Portugal’s international recognition”.118 The same may be said about the images of the campaign against the Kwamato. However, it is important to note that, considering that the public reaction to photography is often unforeseeable, images are not freely distributed amongst the populace, to control more effectively the message that was conveyed.119 This explains why the image reproduced in figure 5 never found its way to the illustrated press. It was too shocking, and it could counter the narrative of civilised treatment given to the Kwamato prisoners. An effort to both sanitise and censor violence is thus noticeable.
An important detail highlighted in photographs of the Kwamato campaign by the Portuguese illustrated press was the engagement with death, especially that depicted in the remains of the Portuguese soldiers killed in 1904. Different authors have stressed the thin line between the decency of not publishing gruesome photographs of death and the wicked attraction of war and bereavement as commodities that excite the living.120 In the case at hand, the allure of the macabre was stronger. The photographs of the bony remains of the Portuguese soldiers, scattered across the land or piled up in a heap, or of the objects they wielded when they met their untimely demise were not published to transmit objective facts to the readers, but to provide a glimpse of the suffering they (and their comrades) withstood to protect and uphold the Empire. Additionally, by documenting the retrieval of those relics, the magazines aimed at exciting a nationalistic feeling aroused by the sacrifice and achievements of the Portuguese army in the colonial setting. Finally, the contrast with the absence of Kwamato corpses emphasised the message that the Portuguese honoured their dead and not the loss of life.
Conclusion
The campaign in the south of Angola was a recurrent topic in the Portuguese illustrated press for more than a semester (since the last weeks of 1907 to June 1908). Every week new photographs were published, keeping the interest in the military operation alive. Those readers who perused the pages of Occidente or Illustração Portugueza certainly believed that the campaign was an utter success (despite the opposition of the Kwamato and the inhospitable environment), that the honour of the Portuguese army was restored, and that the territory was pacified and placed under effective national rule in a successful imperial agenda that could compare with those of other, more powerful, colonial nations. This message was repeated in the photographs of other campaigns in Africa, namely that which took place in the Barué region in Mozambique.121
The troops led by Alves Roçadas surely accomplished the goals they had proposed, but that region in the south of Angola was far from being in peace and under Portuguese control. In the years that followed the campaign, the neighbours of the Kwamato (especially the Kwanyama) organised and resisted the Portuguese occupation fiercely.122
In this vein, this article illustrates the role and the importance of war photography to the military propaganda during times of conflict. The case analysed in this article shows photography’s role to create a representation of a successful and justified military operation and a controlled territory, and therefore to keep the morale of the population in the mainland high.
Furthermore, this article adds to the debate about the importance of photography for the historical study of war. Photographs of military operations, as those of the Kwamato campaign in 1907, offer a unique perspective of sundry aspects of preparation and mobilisation of troops, engagement with the opposing side, and the aftermath of the battle. This article showed that the exceptional viewpoint offered by photography includes not only material details of war, but also the meanings, representations, and myths associated with it.
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This work was supported by National Funds through fct – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (piddac/oe), under Unit ciuhct – Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology (uidb/00286/2020). The author wishes to thank the academic support of ciuhct of the nova School of Science and Technology and the Department of History of the University of York.
Patricia Hayes, “Vision and Violence: Photographies of War in Southern Angola and Northern Namibia”, Kronos. Southern African Histories 27 (2001): 136–137. This means that the claim that the first Portuguese photographer of war was José Henriques de Mello (who covered military campaigns of the Portuguese army in Guinea) is not correct. Mário Matos e Lemos, and Alexandre Ramires, O Primeiro Fotógrafo de Guerra Português. José Henriques de Mello. Guiné: Campanhas de 1907–1908 (The First Portuguese War Photographer. José Henriques de Mello. Guinea: Campaigns of 1907–1908) (Coimbra, 2008).
On the Portuguese civilising mission, see: Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, The ‘Civilising Mission’ of Portuguese Colonialism, 1879–1930 (London, 2015).
Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa. White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent From 1876 to 1912 (New York, 2003), 240.
Gisela Guevara, As Relações entre Portugal e a Alemanha em torno da África. Finais do Século xix e Inícios do Século xx (Relations between Portugal and Germany regarding Africa. End of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century) (Lisbon, 2006), 272–301. José Manuel de Azevedo, “La Colonización del Sudoeste Angoleño del Desierto de Namibe al Planalto de Huíla, 1849–1900” (The Colonization of Southwestern Angola from the Namibe Desert to the Huíla Plateau, 1849–1900), PhD diss., Universidade de Salamanca, 2014, 66–280. Pakenham, The Scramble, 207–217.
René Pélissier, Les guerres grises. Résistance et révoltes en Angola (The Gray Wars. Resistance and Revolts in Angola) (Orgeval, 1977), 449–452.
Joel Serrão, and A. H. de Oliveira Marques, eds., Nova História da Expansão Portuguesa (New History of Portuguese Expansion) (Lisbon, 1998), 11:268–274. Timothy J. Stapleton, “Angola, Portuguese Conquest of (1880–1907)”, in Encyclopedia of African Colonial Conflicts (Santa Barbara, CA, 2016), 63–64.
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Around £50,000,000 today. For this calculation, Maria Eugénia Mata’s analysis to convert réis (1,000,000 réis = 1 conto) to pounds was used (Maria Eugénia Mata, “A Unidade Monetária Portuguesa face à Libra, 1891–1931” [The Portuguese Monetary Unit vis-à-vis the Pound, 1891–1931], Working Papers 22 (1984): 9). The tool Measuring Worth (www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare) was used to compute the relative value of pounds in 2021.
Pélissier, Les Guerres, 455–456.
Álvaro Penalva, “Como nós vencemos no Cuamato” (How we won in the Kwamato), Illustração Portugueza, 20 January 1908, 42–50; Lima, A Campanha, 106; Pélissier, Les Guerres, 463.
Velloso de Castro, A Campanha do Cuamato em 1907 (The Kwamato Campaign in 1907) (Luanda, 1908), 165. Pélissier, Les Guerres, 465–466.
Castro, A Campanha, 169; Rocha Martins, “Palavras de um Heroe” (Words from a Hero), Illustração Portugueza, 30 December 1907, 865–72; Penalva, “Como nós”, 2 March 1908, 279–285; 27 April 1908, 535–541; Pélissier, Les Guerres, 465–467.
René Pélissier, As Campanhas Coloniais de Portugal, 1844–1941 (The Colonial Campaigns of Portugal, 1844–1941) (Lisbon, 2006), 288–295; Rocha Martins, “As manifestações aos expedicionários do Cuamato” (Demonstrations to Cuamato expeditionaries), Illustração Portugueza, 13 January 1908, 931–932; Rodrigo Veloso, “O Regresso dos Expedicionarios do Cuamato” (The Return of the Cuamato Expeditionaries), O Occidente, 20 December 1907, 275–277.
Hayes, “Vision”, 137.
Fernando Costa, and Maria do Carmo Serén, Ilustração Portugueza (Porto, 2004), 46. Portugal had a population of little less than 6 million people.
Around £81 and £102 today, respectively. For these calculations, see note 9.
Conceição Andrade Martins, “Trabalho e condições de vida em Portugal (1850–1913)” (Work and living conditions in Portugal (1850–1913)), Análise Social 32 (142) (1997): 529–533.
José Manuel Tengarrinha, Nova história da imprensa portuguesa das origens a 1865 (New history of the Portuguese press from its origins to 1865) (Lisbon, 2013), 865–866.
António Candeias and Eduarda Simões, “Alfabetização e escola em Portugal no século xx: Censos Nacionais e estudos de caso” (Literacy and school in Portugal in the 20th century: National Censuses and case studies), Análise Psicológica 1 (17) (1999): 170.
Gerry Beegan, The Mass Image: A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (Basingstoke, 2008), 14.
Hilary Roberts, “War Photographers: A Special Breed”, in War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath (Houston, TX, 2012), 10; Ulrich Keller, The Ultimate Spectacle: A Visual History of the Crimean War (Philadelphia, PA, 2001), ix–x and 251. Puiseux, Les Figures, 62.
Pippa Oldfield, Photography and War (London, 2019), 20. John Stauffer, “The ‘Terrible Reality’ of the First Living-Room Wars”, in War/Photography. Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath (Houston, 2012), 82.
Keller, The Ultimate, 155; Hélène Puiseux, “La bataille: mutations d’une figure. Du champ de bataille à l’individu combattant” (The battle: mutations of a figure. From the battlefield to the individual combatant), in Voir, ne pas voir la guerre (Paris, 2001), 210; Puiseux, Les figures, 123, 150, and 154; François Robichon, “De la peinture à la photographie et inversement … ” (From painting to photography and vice versa … ), in Voir, ne pas voir la guerre, 42; Jeff L. Rosenheim, Photography and the American Civil War (New York, 2013), 1 and 65. Stauffer, “The ‘Terrible’”, 85.
Oldfield, Photography, 7.
Puiseux, Les figures, 128; Robichon, “De la peinture”, 43.
Oldfield, Photography, 20; Puiseux, “La bataille”, 210.
Daniel Foliard, Combattre, punir, photographier. Empires coloniaux, 1890–1914 (Fight, punish, photograph. Colonial empires, 1890–1914) (Paris, 2019), 76; Oldfield, Photography, 21; Anne Wilkes Tucker, “Introduction”, in War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath (Houston, TX, 2012), 4.
Oldfield, Photography, 7, 61–65, and 79–80.
Foliard, Combattre, 36; James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago, IL, 1997), 12–13 and 29.
Foliard, Combattre, 208; Keller, The Ultimate, 9; Oldfield, Photography, 19–20.
Susan D. Moeller, Shooting War: Photography and the American Experience of Combat (New York, 1989), 14.
Coleção José Veloso de Castro, 1907, pt/ahm/fe/cave/vc/a10, arqhist.exercito.pt/details?id=158369, Centro de Audiovisuais do Exército, Lisbon (cave).
Campanhas do Cuamato de 1907, Documentos Carvalhão Duarte/Rocha Martins, 04498.006, casacomum.org/cc/arquivos?set=e_4399, Fundação Mário Soares, Lisbon (fms).
Thierry Gervais, “Witness to War: The Uses of Photography in the Illustrated Press, 1855–1904”, Journal of Visual Culture 9 (3) (2010): 377; John Taylor, War Photography. Realism in the British Press (London, 2021).
Oldfield, Photography, 24; Roberts, “War Photographers”, 13; Taylor, War Photography.
Christraud M. Geary, “Photographs as Materials for African History: Some Methodological Considerations”, History in Africa 13 (1986): 93.
Robin Kelsey, “Is Landscape Photography”, in Is Landscape … ? Essays on the Identity of Landscape (London, 2016), 71–92; Oldfield, Photography, 14 and 123.
Oldfield, Photography, 97.
Roberts, “War Photographers”, 10–14.
Castro, A Campanha, 210.
A usual practice in war. Cf. Roberts, “War Photographers”, 12.
Cátia Miriam Costa, “O outro na narrativa fotográfica de Velloso de Castro: Angola, 1908” (The other in Velloso de Castro’s photographic narrative: Angola, 1908), Culturas Populares. Revista Electrónica 7 (2008): 2.
Castro, A Campanha, 66.
Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London, 1977), 17; Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York, 1972), 109–156.
Márcia Benetti, “Análise do discurso em jornalismo: estudos de vozes e sentidos” (Discourse analysis in journalism: studies of voices and meanings), in Metodologia de pesquisa em jornalismo (Petrópolis, 2007), 112–113.
Filipa Lowndes Vicente, “O Império da Visão: Histórias de um livro” (The Empire of Vision: Stories of a book), in O Império da Visão. Fotografia no Contexto Colonial Português (1860–1969) (Lisbon, 2014), 15–28; John Taylor, Body Horror: Photojournalism, Catastrophe and War (New York, 1998), 19, 59, and 78.
Margery B. Franklin, Robert C. Becklen, and Charlotte L. Doyle, “The Influence of Titles on How Paintings Are Seen”, Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology 26 (2) (1993): 103–108.
A Campanha d’Africa contada pelo Major Roçadas e outros guerreiros (The African Campaign told by Major Roçadas and other warriors) (Porto, 1908); Lima, A Campanha.
Castro, A Campanha.
Tucker, Michels, and Zelt, War/Photography.
Barthes, Image, 17.
Foliard, Combattre, 20; Beatriz Pichel, Picturing the Western Front: Photography, Practices and Experiences in First World War France (Manchester, 2021).
Laurent Henninger, “L’image du chef” (The image of the leader), in Voir, ne pas voir la guerre, 197–198.
Puiseux, Les Figures, 128.
Another expression of the belief that characterised this period that science and technology were the gauge to measure the value of different nations. See: Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY, 1989), 134. On machinery as fetishes, see: Taylor, Body Horror, 163.
Bruno J. Navarro, Um Império Projectado pelo Silvo da Locomotiva. O papel da engenharia portuguesa na apropriação do espaço colonial africano. Angola e Moçambique, 1869–1930 (An Empire Designed by the Whistle of the Locomotive. The role of Portuguese engineering in the appropriation of African colonial space. Angola and Mozambique, 1869–1930) (Lisbon, 2018), 352–385.
Rui Assubuji, “A Visual Struggle for Mozambique: Revisiting Narratives, Interpreting Photographs (1850–1930)”, PhD diss., University of the Western Cape, 2020, 190.
An expression coined by Bárbara Direito, “Políticas Coloniais de Terras em Moçambique: o Caso de Manica e Sofala sob a Companhia de Moçambique, 1892–1942” (Colonial Land Policies in Mozambique: the Case of Manica and Sofala under the Company of Mozambique, 1892–1942), PhD diss., Universidade de Lisboa, 2013, 44.
Pichel, Picturing; Taylor, War Photography.
Cf. Taylor, Body Horror, 174.
Assubuji, “A Visual”, 136.
Rosenheim, Photography, 96.
Pedro Lains, “Causas do colonialismo português em África, 1822–1975” (Causes of Portuguese colonialism in Africa, 1822–1975), Análise Social 33 (146–147) (1998): 467.
Leonor Pires Martins, Um Império de Papel. Imagens do Colonialismo Português na Imprensa Periódica Ilustrada (A Paper Empire. Images of Portuguese Colonialism in the Illustrated Periodic Press) (Lisbon, 2014), 94–97.
Rosenheim, Photography, 46; Pichel, Picturing.
Lima, A Campanha, 69; See also Costa, “O outro”, 3, 13, and 17.
Castro, A Campanha, 16–17.
Foliard, Combattre, 183.
A Campanha d’Africa, 19, and 29–31; Castro, A Campanha, 61, 75–6, 78–80, 96–8, 114, and 140; Lima, A Campanha, 103, 119, and 167.
Lima, A Campanha, 137; O Occidente, 10 October 1907, 218–219.
A Campanha d’Africa, 45, 60, and 63; Alberto Telles, “Campanha dos Cuamatas” (Kwamato Campaign), O Occidente, 20 November 1907, 253; Castro, A Campanha, 14–15, 70, 129–130, 166–168, and 226; Lima, A Campanha, 11–12, 24, 96, 132, 146, and 173; Martins, “Palavras”, 30 December 1907, 865–872; Penalva, “Como nós”, 3 February 1908, 149–155; 24 February 1908, 249–255.
Cf. Puiseux, Les figures, 112.
Keller, The Ultimate, 133; Taylor, War Photography.
Robert Frank, “Ennemi, allié, défaite et victoire” (Enemy, ally, defeat and victory), in Voir, ne pas voir la guerre, 194.
A Campanha d’Africa, 34; Lima, A Campanha, 149.
Keller, The Ultimate, 166.
Castro, A Campanha, 179.
Brothers, War and Photography, 184; Keller, The Ultimate, 200–203; Pichel, Picturing; Rosenheim, Photography, 179–192.
Castro, A Campanha, 179–192 and 265; Penalva, “Como nós”, 24 February 1908, 249–255; 11 May 1908, 602.
Costa, “O outro”, 15.
Costa, “O outro”, 2, 4, 14, and 16.
Hugo Silveira Pereira, “Representações metropolitanas do(s) Outro(s) colonizado(s) nas fotografias da campanha do Cuamato de 1907 no sul de Angola” (Metropolitan representations of the Other[s] in the photographs of the 1907 Kwamato Campaign in southern Angola), Eikon Imago 15 (2020): 133–139.
Cf. Hayes, “Vision”, 145; Oldfield, Photography, 127–129.
Castro, A Campanha, 138, 160–161, 180–181, and 192. See also: Lima, A Campanha, 165–166; Penalva, “Como nós”, 16 March 1908, 345–351.
Cf. Frank, “Ennemi”, 191–192; Robichon, “De la peinture”, 43. Taylor, Body Horror, 19 and 188.
Cf. Puiseux, Les Figures, 112; Taylor, Body Horror, 169.
Lima, A Campanha, 82.
A Campanha d’Africa, 14; Lima, A Campanha, 41, 50–51, 70, and 81.
A Campanha d’Africa, 63–64; Castro, A Campanha, 58, 219, and 228–234; Lima, A Campanha, 111–113, and 213; Martins, “Palavras”, 30 December 1907, 865–872; Penalva, “Como nós”, 2 March 1908, 279–285; 6 April 1908, 441–447; 20 April 1908, 505–512; 27 April 1908, 535–541; 11 May 1908, 602–608; Pélissier, Les guerres, 465.
Cf. Taylor, Body Horror, 129.
Frank, “Ennemi”, 192; Puiseux, Les figures, 128.
Castro, A Campanha, 242–243.
A Campanha d’Africa, 42; Castro, A Campanha, 202–203, 234, 246–247, 266, and 271–272; Lima, A Campanha, 186–187, 189–190, 208–210, 222–223; Martins, “Palavras”, 30 December 1907, 872; Penalva, “Como nós”, 16 March 1908, 345–351; 23 March 1908, 377–383; 20 April 1908, 505–512; 11 May 1908, 603–608; 1 June 1908, 685–691.
Lima, A Campanha, 211.
Ryan, Picturing Empire, 158, 186, and 194.
Cláudia Castelo, “Uma incursão no lusotropicalismo de Gilberto Freyre” (An incursion into Gilberto Freyre’s lusotropicalism), Blogue de História Lusófona 6 (2011): 276.
The caption in this picture, as well as in others printed in this article, were written by one José de Almeida, nicknamed “Pesca-Rãs” (frog catcher), who was likely the organiser of the photographs of Marino Pollatos in an album.
Hayes, “Vision”, 137.
Castro, A Campanha, 240–242; Lima, A Campanha, 213–214; Penalva, “Como nós”, 1 June 1908, 685–691.
Pélissier, Les guerres, 467.
Foliard, Combattre, 235; Keller, The Ultimate, 183–192 and 216–222.
Foliard, Combattre, 226; Oldfield, Photography, 42. Leonard V. Smith, The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War (Ithaca, NY, 2007), 67.
Castro, A Campanha, 213–214.
Gervais, “Witness”, 370–371, and 377; Keller, The Ultimate, X, and 38; Stauffer, “The ‘Terrible”, 80; Taylor, Body Horror, 5, 34, and 52; Taylor, War Photography.
Gervais, “Witness”, 378 and 381; Keller, The Ultimate, 29.
On the power of the illustrated press to provide comprehensible pictures of reality, see: Beegan, The Mass Image, 1–23.
Assubuji, “A Visual”, 210.
Taylor, Body Horror, 14; António Pedro Vicente, Um Repórter Fotográfico na 1.ª Grande Guerra (A Photographic Reporter in the First World War) (Porto, 2000), 5, and 14–15.
Keller, The Ultimate, 4; Pichel, Picturing; Taylor, Body Horror, 5 and 8.
Assubuji, “A Visual”, 109.
Pélissier, As Campanhas, 292–295.
