The Fugitive Image: Colonial Terror and Contemporary Art

Authors

  • Afonso Dias Ramos

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15847/obsOBS0001815

Keywords:

Visual Culture, Atrocity Photography, Colonial Propaganda, Decolonization Wars

Abstract

As colonial visual culture now fully integrates the mainstream of historical research and artistic practice at a global level, one subset of imagery still remains woefully unaddressed: the atrocity photograph. This essay provides a brief historical contextualization of the role of photography in decolonization wars and the concurrent emergence of critical theorizing on violent images, and why it still remains exceedingly difficult to analyse graphic pictures in the colonial context; then, honing in on the case of the Portuguese colonial wars in Africa (1961-1975), it examines the rare appropriation of a shocking photograph in Daniel Barroca’s work Circular Body (2015).

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Published

2020-09-28

How to Cite

Dias Ramos, A. (2020). The Fugitive Image: Colonial Terror and Contemporary Art. Observatorio (OBS*). https://doi.org/10.15847/obsOBS0001815

Issue

Intermedialidades em imagens (pós)coloniais (Special Issue)

Section

Articles

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