Goan Photographers in East Africa (1860-1900)

Paper Abstract: I will analyse the practice and presence of Goan photographers away from Goa, mainly in East Africa, in the period that goes from the 1860s to the 1890s. To write a history of Goan photographers in the 19th century – and not only of photographers in Goa – means necessarily to leave Goa’s borders, and address questions of belonging, mobility, and transnational, transimperial and diasporic identities. My approach will mean crossing those colonial frontiers, that were also crossed by photography and photographers, while also placing Goan photographic practices in the wider history of photography in India and in the coastal port cities of the Indian ocean.