Hunting Pictures of Wartime

Photographic Encounters in a Vernacular Archive from the Colonial War in Angola (1961-741)

Abstract

What occurs when soldiers’ private photographs enter the public domain? This article examines a digital vernacular repository and its collection of personal images from the Portuguese colonial war (1961-74). Drawing on archival analysis, interviews, and ethnographic research regarding the production, uses, and circulation of war photography, it discusses the transformation of photographs from objects of affect into objects of public scrutiny. By exploring the history of the self-named digital archive, this essay argues that its emergence, success, and longevity are inseparable from its vernacular character and the absence of consistent Portuguese politics of memory concerning the war. The archive’s curatorial practices avoid questioning colonialism and the violence of the conflict, thereby providing an uncritical space for articulating unofficial representations of the past while sustaining the public narrative of the war years. Focusing on the archive’s collection of photographs from Angola, the article addresses three significant encounters that conscripts experienced due to the war: their encounters with military life, Africa, and Africans. The relationship between photograph and caption proves crucial to understanding the colonial and warrior imaginaries that underpin the photographic gaze and its contemporary discursive reconfiguration.