Researcher: Maria José Lobo Antunes
Funding: FCT Postdoctoral Scholarship (SFRH/BPD/116134/2016)
The project “Image, War and Memory: Colonial War Photography in Private Collections and in Institutional Archives” examines the photographic representation of the Portuguese colonial war. Exploring both the official images and ex-combatants’ private photographic archives, it aims to reconstruct a visual basis of the war that articulates the Estado Novo’s public vision of the conflict and the personal visions of those who participated in it – which were accessible in restricted circles only. Drawing on contributions from anthropology, history and memory studies, this project investigates both the material aspects and the relational dynamics fostered by photography. The objective is twofold: on the one hand, to examine the regime of visuality of the Portuguese empire and of its colonial war in a comparative perspective and, on the other hand, to explore the processes of mnemonic composition that are activated by the materiality of personal photographs.
Image: Cover of private album of war photos.