Unveiling and Promoting an Unknown Colony: Portuguese Photographs of Timor from the Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

This article analyzes a sample of 138 photographs (121 unique and 17 duplicates) of the former Portuguese colony of Timor. The photographs were produced between the 1890s and the eve of the First World War and were kept at the Portuguese Photography Centre in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Library or published in the press (illustrated magazines Occidente and Illustração Portugueza) or as illustrated postcards. Using a semiotic and photojournalistic methodology and combining photographic images with textual sources - parliamentary debates, military reports, press reports, and written opinions of experts on overseas issues - in the analysis, this study shows how photography represented Timor and how this representation was presented in the metropolis. The sample of images reveals an eminently ethnographic and anthropological interest on the part of the Portuguese photographers. They aimed to bridge the knowledge gap regarding this specific region of the empire for colonial decision-makers in Lisbon. Despite the ethnographic and anthropological interest, there was an attempt to promote Timor as a potential emigration destination through images that depicted the process of domestication and Portugalization of the territory or the agricultural and mineral potential of the colony. This study contributes to historiographical debates on the use of photography as a primary source and on the role of this technology in the imperial agendas of European nations in Africa and Asia.