Paper short abstract:

Photographs retrieved from the Military Historical Archive in Lisbon allow us to consider the ‘negative imprint’ of colonial archives in the case of Mozambique. Given their indexical excess, details emerge out of intense re-examination, parallel with latent knowledge waiting to surface.

Paper long abstract:

For this paper, I return to photographs retrieved from the Military Historical Archive in

Lisbon to consider the ‘negative imprint’ of colonial archives in the case of Mozambique. For

their potential impact on changing historical discourse, in the reading of images I consider

absences, unidentified people, places, and other involuntary missing information, as well as

their poor circulation that led to colonial aphasia. Believing that photographs show much

more as different eyes and later interpretations claim different meanings, the paper proposes

their re-entry into the public sphere as a way to compensate for those lacunae while opening

the images up to the possibility of ‘other lives’ that expand our apprehension of their

potential narratives.

Images have a generative quality resulting from their prolific indexical excess; details might

become visible out of intense looking, and new understandings emerge prompted by time and

experience. This unpredictability can be, in a sense, parallel with latent knowledge waiting to

surface. The study leans on the concept of ‘material hermeneutic’ to enrich the interpretative

approach and understanding of the ‘evidential quality of photographs as an historical

statement’. It contends that, while providing an imperial visual narrative, cameras as a ‘tool

of empire’ have produced residual archival outcomes, namely photographs that can

encourage counter-narratives. Consequently, they have a dedicated future as a ‘tool of visual

history’ and are capable of a dynamic social intervention in the post-colonial setting.