Essay

The Archive is Present

Performing a Story of Dictatorship Through the Family Album

Ana Janeiro

Essay

The Archive is Present

Performing a Story of Dictatorship Through the Family Album

Ana Janeiro

https://doi.org/10.47659/m9.032.ess

Vol. 5, no. 2
2020
21/07/2021

Master

This essay describes an investigation into a family photographic archive that belonged to my grandparents and represent a period in Portugal’s past (1940–1975) scarred by one of the longest dictatorships in history. The research carries out an ‘iconographic’ analysis of the photographs in the family albums and on how these were influenced by the consistent and highly visual propaganda of the New State regime (1933–1974). It demonstrates how the iconography of this visual propaganda embedded itself into the family album, specifically regarding its propaganda strategy and its ideology and politics towards women. Later these findings were explored through performance photography, creating a photographic body of work. Focusing mostly on the figure of my grandmother and exploring pose and gesture, which were subsequently re-performed for the camera. The information contained within the archive images is re-written within the performance images.

Keywords: archive, dictatorship, photography and performative, visual propaganda, visualization of the role of women

Ana Janeiro holds a PhD from the University of Westminster (2019) and an MA in Photography from KIAD (currently UCA) in Rochester, UK. She studied Fine Arts at the Universidade de Lisboa, in Lisbon. She has exhibited regularly since mid-2000. The following solo shows are of special note: The Archive is Present, London Gallery West, London, UK (2019); ALBUM, Índia Portuguesa 1951-1961, Laboratório das Artes, Guimarães, Portugal (2010). Recently, she participated in the following group shows: GoaPhoto, Revisiting the Album, Aldona, Goa, Índia, (2019); hyphen- an exposition between art and research, AmbikaP3, London, UK, (2019); Beyond the mirror, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (2017/18). She is an Invited Associate Professor at the School of Communication and Media Studies of the Lisbon Polytechnic. She is represented in several art collections.

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Photography was key to the regime’s propaganda and one of the most widely used tools to spread the ideals of the New State and of the ‘politics of the spirit’.

Reading time: 8 min.

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