Heimlich/unheimlich

Abstract

The Catholic missions of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit have had a strong bearing on the development of Angolan Christianity, especially from the 1890’s onwards. This period coincided with the introduction of photography to the colony. While it has been established that individual Spiritans collaborated with pioneer photographers, the Congregation’s influence on the content of early Angolan “photographic archives” is still largely unconsidered. This study will trace the missionaries’ influence in the work of José Augusto Cunha Moraes (1855–1933) and Elmano Cunha e Costa (1892–1955). Particular attention will be paid to the way these photographers echoed the missionaries’ worldview by portraying their missions as ‘cozy’ places and naturalizing a specific, gendered division of labor.