Combining photography with anthropology and history, Mobilising Archives is a research project that looks at Africanist archival photography from a postcolonial perspective. It focuses on the evolving concept of ethnographic photography by exploring ethnographers’ field photography production and subsequent use.

The research selected three ethnographers as case studies (Carlos Estermann, António Carreira and Ruy Duarte de Carvalho), whose overall photographic production covers the same region, Southern Angola, from the 1930s to the 1990s, and one overall theme: rural people. 

Our diachronic long-term approach, from colonialism to post-coloniality, included research in both virtual and physical archives and libraries and fieldwork in Southern Angola.

This website assembles some of the findings, experiments and resources used or created in the research. 

The project was funded from February 2017 to February 2020. The news/activities section continues to be occasionally updated.

Later content updates

march 2023: page dedicated to sinais misteriosos… já se vê…, book by Rui Duarte (1979).