Revisiting the Portuguese Colonial Exhibition through Alvão's photographs

Abstract

During the summer of 1934, the city of Porto (Portugal) hosted the First Portuguese Colonial Exhibition, in which hundreds of indigenous people from the various possessions were exhibited in recreations of traditional villages. The Exhibition intended to show the empire to the metropolitan population, in order to mobilize it for the colonial enterprise, promoted as a great national desideratum by the Estado Novo. The images captured by the lens of Domingos Alvão, the official photographer of the event, contributed greatly to the creation of a romantic vision of Portuguese colonialism that, to a large extent, has been perpetuated to the present day.