GUINEE PORTUGAISE

(2013)

Black and white video. 13 minutes.




Video from scans of an album of vintage postcards.


What attracted me to this found postcard album was the way it bridges the traditional early photographic album of an explorer’s documentation of far away lands, with the more modern and personal tourist’s travel album.

I wonder who the photographer was (the man photographed in the safari hat, or whose shadow as the photographer is projected into several pictures)? His photographs touch on so many of the usual colonial tropes. And yet, I feel, there is also a respect for the people he is photographing, and certainly an awe of the land he is visiting.

These photographs let us wander through the photographer’s memories. Or is it that they let us invent our own memories?

My album Prince Aniaba, based on my travels in Senegal in 2002, was made in response to these postcards.



Guinee Portugaise. 2013. 13 minutes.