Into the Negative (Space): Images of War Across Generations in Portugal and Guinea-Bissau. Death is Not the End

Abstract

I compare a photo album of the war in former Portuguese Guinea that I found in my home when I was a child with a collection of writings by Victor Bor, a healer and diviner whom I met in southern Guinea-Bissau who was a guerrilla during that country’s war of liberation and who was possessed by a vision that the Balanta people call Kyangyang [The Shadow]. I discuss the visuality and tactility of these two complex assemblages of images as tangible negative spaces that capture and shape the gaze. How do certain images have the power to enthrall, to trap the viewer? How can they intoxicate and mobilize into gang murder in a wartime setting? At the same time, I discuss the layers and characters that the gaze assumes in order for someone to create these images, and how they materialize a kind of exchange between generations. What is it that crosses the gaze of a previous generation through its images of violence? Yet, in parallel, there is the stunning effect of looking at shocking images of war, as opposed to being stunned by visions of lights and explosions that compel shocking actions in a post-war environment.

Keywords

• colonial war
• liberation war
• war gaze
• war and vision
• cross-generational gaze
• photography
• phenomenology
• kyangyang [the shadow]
• portugal
• guinea-bissau