The object of the project PRINTED PHOTOGRAPHY. IMAGE AND PROPAGANDA IN PORTUGAL (1934-1974), funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), is to identify, analyze and discuss the photographic image printed as propaganda instrument by the Portuguese «New State» from 1934 to the end of the regime in April 1974. 1934 is indeed the first moment when printed photography was put to the service of the dictatorship by the National Secretariat for Propaganda (SPN) in the exhibition produced for the 1st Congress of the regime’s single party, «National Union», and the 1st Colonial Exhibition in Oporto.

Photography as an object of study arrived late in Portugal. António Sena’s 1998 book, History of Photographic Image in Portugal - 1839-1997, remains the main reference given its considerable body of images and texts covering more than 150 years of photography in Portugal. Later, several new theoretical studies have enriched the history of photography in the country, such as Emília Tavares, Susana Martins and António Barrocas, among others.

 

The concept of "printed photography" that guides our project concerns the photographic images that will be select from an extensive archive of publications composed of magazines and propaganda albums with different objectives and creative forms regarding commemorations, voyages, landscapes and monuments as well as ethnographic explorations. Printed photography in Portugal will be conceived as an intersection between modernity and the requirements of politics (Mendelson, 2007: 9-17).