Em paz por terras de Angola
Em paz por terras de Angola (English: in peace through the landscapes of Angola ) is a photo reportage and a Portuguese illustrated book by the photographer Jean Charles Pinheira and his wife Marie Christine Pinheira, with texts by Sandro Bettencourt.
Emergence
Instead of realizing his plans to emigrate to South Africa, Pinheira's interest turned to Angola after his Portuguese uncle told him in 1969 about the beauty of what was then the Portuguese colony . In the group Australe 70 , which he subsequently founded , he was accompanied by the Yugoslav mechanic Kosta Cveticain, and by the film directors Bernard Bolle ( Switzerland ) and Guy Leroy (France). The Portuguese Overseas Ministry ( Ministério do Ultramar ) financed the group's ship passages and their equipment and vehicles, the Portuguese company Rocha Monteiro granted a loan and donated the Canon photo material, while Fina sponsored fuel, oil and the like. a. cared.
In June 1970 the group traveled to Lisbon , from where they embarked for Luanda with official approval and their complete equipment . After extensive recordings in the capital of Angola, they set off on trips across the country. After a year and a half, the group's filmmakers returned to France, where they made documentaries from their material. In January 1973 Pinheira also returned to France. There he met the young photographer Marie Christine, whom he later married and with whom he still lives today. Following the invitation of her future husband, she joined him and his remaining companions of the Australe 70 when they set out for Angola again in 1973, where they continued to take photos until Christmas 1974. With the end of the Portuguese colonial war and the subsequent independence of Angola in 1975, the country increasingly sank into civil war, and the group was forced to leave Angola after traveling nearly 200,000 kilometers in the country since 1970.
In the following years, Pinheira published a large number of other photo reports, mainly from French regions and from Brazil, some in collaboration with his wife.
It was not until 2010 that the present photo report of his Angola trip 1970–1975 appeared in Portugal, with texts by the Portuguese journalist Sandro Bettencourt, who was born in Angola in 1975 ( Em paz por terra de Angola , Zebra Publicações, Lisbon 2010, ISBN 978-989-8391-03 -2 ).
The long delay can be explained on the one hand by the decades-long civil war in Angola and the various social changes in Portugal after its Carnation Revolution in 1974, which postponed the attentions and caused no interest in the photo report. On the other hand, the publication today is due to the renewed interest in Angola on the part of Portuguese society, especially as the most recently important emigration country for Portuguese and the historical parallels.
content
The book shows, with accompanying explanatory texts, the various facets of Angola between 1970 and 1975, its cities and landscapes, its ethnic groups , and the country's flora and fauna .
After a foreword by the Portuguese journalist Emídio Rangel , born in Angola in 1947 , and Sandro Bettencourt's introduction to Angola and the photographer and his project, the five chapters of the book follow. Each chapter is preceded by a suitable poem or quotation with a photo and an introductory text by Bettencourt. The photos are accompanied by short, informative notes.
In the first chapter the most important cities, their buildings and peculiarities are presented. The second chapter is devoted to the Angolan economy, both agriculture (coffee, cotton, bananas, etc.), as well as industry (oil refining, sugar, food processing) and the mining of raw materials (oil, diamonds, ores, etc.), as well as infrastructure ( including the ports and rail traffic in Angola ). The third chapter introduces the Angolan part of the oldest desert in the world, the Namib . The various tribes of Angola and their customs and traditions are the subject of the fourth chapter, including the Bushmen and various Bantu ethnicities. Finally, the fifth chapter shows special encounters, moods and situations that are described as characteristic of the country's attraction.
criticism
The book was published in Portugal in late 2010 and received some media attention.
With his mostly attentively lively and powerful, but sometimes also superficially striking photographs (mostly in color), and their accompanying notes, the book provides a comprehensive overview of Angola in the early 1970s. The positive aspects are emphasized and negative points are largely excluded. For example, the problematic situations in terms of human rights, employment relationships and income distribution are not mentioned, while other points are glorified, such as the poverty of the local population groups and their lack of access to modern health care and education, which is presented here as an idyllic originality are. Mention should be made of the value-free presentation and the appreciative approach to the local population groups, and the prejudice-free interest in the traditions, art and history of the ethnic groups visited. The book is an informative, albeit partially one-sided, inventory and one of the few comprehensive portraits of Angola before its independence.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Em paz por terras de Angola , 1st edition, Zebra Publicações, Lisbon 2010, page 8f
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgWFY8AA48
- ↑ http://www.zebrapublicacoes.com/revistas/133-em-paz-por-terras-de-angola-na-revista-ana.html ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was created automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
