The photography of Ricardo Rangel: experience, memory, and colonialism in Mozambique

• Grant number: 14/25152-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date until: March 01, 2015
• End date until: February 29, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Sylvia Caiuby Novaes
• Grantee: Bruna Nunes da Costa Triana
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 17/12493-2 - Archives of memories: methodological and empirical contributions for the analysis of Ricardo Rangel photograph collection, BE.EP.DR 15/19946-7 - The Portuguese colonialism through the lens of Ricardo Rangel: analytical contributions on photography and memory, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This project aims to examine the photographs of Ricardo Rangel (1924-2009) in the context of the intensification of anti-colonial struggle and independence in Mozambique, between 1955 and 1975. As a result of his work as a photojournalist, Rangel has produced images that interweave social protest, political engagement, and poetic composition, and has become a reference in the field of Mozambican photography. The object of this research is constituted by his imagetic collection, from which we want to apprehend, on the one hand, the narrative mechanisms used by him to compose what we will call photographic experience, and on the other, the social and political aspects his photographs reveal about the intrinsic violence of colonialism, the conflictive process of liberation, and the intense changes Maputo was undergoing at the time. The empirical research will focus initially on two institutions: the Photographic Training and Documentation Centre and the Mozambican Photography Association, which preserve his work. We are interested mainly in questioning to what extent his photographic work has contributed or has been articulated to the construction of a social memory in post-independence Mozambique. The importance of this research is both due to the fact that it concentrates on a turbulent historical period and because it is a period whose constitution as memory is still in dispute. This motivates us to analyze the changes and contradictions that the photographs reveal, as well as the details and specificity of the photographer's regard. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

BRUNA TRIANA. Rastros, ruínas e decadência: contribuições para uma antropologia dos arquivos. Rev. Antropol., v. 65, n. 2, 2022-10-17. (14/25152-0)