Online Resources
This page gathers digital resources of three kinds, related to photography and cinema in Africa. Clic on the letter to scroll down.
A) External online resources useful for our research on ethnographic photography in Angola. It includes links to digital archives and repositories of digital collections on photography in the Portuguese colonial case, particularly about Angola, and inspiring photography projects related to africanist photography. As some of the resources are only in Portuguese, we signal it accordingly (PT).
B) Links to written or directed works on history, photography and anthropology resulting from Mobilising Archives.
C) External online resources useful for our research on cinema in Angola, (in development)
If you have an online resource you would like to share with us, use the form.
External Resources on Photography in Africa
Digital Archives
- Africa through a lens
- holds photographs spanning over 100 years of African history, namely within the British colonial rule. An initiative of the UK National Archives.
- African Activist Archive Project
An online archive of more than 10,000 items such as photographs, related to activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid and social injustice from the 1950s throughout the 1990s.
- Arquivo Científico Tropical
- The digital platform of the former IICT, the Portuguese state institution dedicated to tropical knowledge.
- Colonial Press in Portuguese Language (Angola)
- Digitised press, edited in Angola during colonial times, housed at the digital archive of the of PUCRS Research Centre in Communication Sciences NUPECC, Brazil (PT).
- Diamang Digital
- Digitised documental, photographic and phonographic materials of the ex-Diamang, the Diamonds Company of Angola, operating in the Northeast region (PT).
- IMPA
- The International Mission Photography Archive offers historical images from Protestant and Catholic missionary collections in Britain, Norway, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States. The website is an initiative of the University of Southern California.
- Memories from Africa and Asia
- A dedicated bibliographic database, it also provides online access to digitised books related to the Portuguese colonial project (PT).
- Overseas General Agency’s photographic fund
- The National Archive of Torre do Tombo in Portugal, hosts a photographic fund created by the Portuguese Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1924, with images dated from 1928 to 1966. The fund includes photographs from Angola, such as from rural populations.
- Cameroonian Studio Photograph
- Research and digital collection of several Cameroonian Studio photographs (Mambila villages and also Bamiléké area, hosted by the Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies, produced by David Zeitlyn.
- Images from the Portuguese colonies
- of Mozambique, Angola, Cape Vert, São Tomé, Guiné, Timor, Macau and India: General Agency of the Overseas Territories (Agência Geral do Ultramar) 1926-1966, Portuguese National Archive of Tombo Tower (PT).
- Photographs of indigenous people and landscapes of colonial Angola
- A digital collection from the personal archive of Jaime de Morais (early XX century), housed at Casa Comum, Mário Soares Foundation (PT).
- Postcards of Angola and of indigenous people
- Available online from the photographic fund of Artur E. de Castro Soromenho (1940s) (PT).
- The African Studies Collection
- A digital collection managed by the University of Florida’s Center of African Studies. It includes amongst other items a photography collection from early 1970s in Rwanda of wildlife photographer Bob Campbell.
- The AfroDigital Museum (Rio de Janeiro)
- Digital collection and platform hosting virtual exhibitions on the practices of those who identify themselves or are identified by others as afro-descendants.
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- Website housing photoalbums related to Africa, and African countries.
- AWA: la revue de la femme noire
- A digitised version of one of the earliest independent African women’s magazines. Produced in Dakar, Senegal by a network of African women between 1964 and 1973.
- Knowledge and Vision
- Website of a research project devoted to Photography within the Portuguese colonial archive and museum (1850-1950).
- Photography section of the Slaves’ Trade and Slavery project
- Initiated by the UNESCO in 1999 and fostered by the Brazilian National Library (pt).
- [Re:]Entanglements
Website of the project ‘Museum Affordances’ which is re-engaging with the ethnographic archive of colonial anthropologist Northcote W. Thomas., coordinated by Paul Basu, UK.- Reframing PJU
- Website of an open ended artistic project on published photographs from the African continent since the 1930s, coordinated by Andrea Stultiens, Netherlands.
- Website where Portugal’s Estado Novo (1933-1974) is looked at through the historical visual record of the period. Fostered by Gulbenkian Foundation and MIT Visualizing Cultures.
Resources deriving from Mobilising Archives
Published and Directed
Ponte, I. (2023). An Africanist Photo-ethno-graphy in the Portuguese New State (1928–1974). In: Vicente, F.L., Ramos, A.D. (eds) Photography in Portuguese Colonial Africa, 1860–1975. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27795-5_5
Ponte, I. 2022, “Museu Nacional de Etnologia: um tardio museu de antropologia“, Lugar de Memória in Re-Mapping Memories: Lisboa-Hamburg, Goethe Institut. 14 Março. (PT/GERMAN)
Ponte, I. 2021, “An Angolan vernacular-language fiction film as para-ethnographic film: nationalism and the evolving politics of film circulation and reception”, History and Anthropology, 32: 5, 596-616. doi: 10.1080/
Ponte, I. 2020, “An Openness to Experiment: Ruy Duarte de Carvalho’s Anthropological Field Photography in Rural Southern Angola and its Archival Reusages”, Kronos: Southern African Histories, 46(1). DOI: 10.17159/2309-9585/2020/v46a11
Ponte I. 2020, Archives, Films and Memories: ingredients to remember and to forget the past, BUALA.
Ponte I. 2019, 50 anos no Sul de Angola, 8 min. (PT only)
Ponte I. 2019, “Conhecer e Animar o Arquivo de Ruy Duarte de Carvalho“, in Lança, Marta (ed.), Diálogos com Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, Lisboa: BUALA & CEC-FL-ULisboa. (PT only)
External Resources on Cinema in Africa
Film Archives and Online Projects (in progress)
- Website housing photoalbums related to Africa, and African countries.