Portraits of slavery in the Morro Velho mine

Abstract

During the operations of the British Saint John d’El Rey Mining Company in Minas Gerais, a huge photographic collection, which is dispersed in various collections, was produced to document routine activities and notable events in its mining areas. Considering photography as an instrument capable of producing social meaning, we used a sample from this collection, taken between the end of slavery and the beginning of post-abolitionism, which portrays Africans and their descendants in a variety of situations. The content of this selection, as will be shown in this article, can be interpreted as a representation that ideologically expresses the domination of the countries that were protagonists of European imperialism, such as England (the headquarters of the aforementioned company), over the peoples they considered lower, like a negros, on the Eurocentric scale of civilization.