O fotógrafo no arquivo: reflexões sobre a (in)visibilidade do aparato fotográfico nos acervos coloniais

The photographical archive of German Colonial Society has more than 50 thousand images. Clearly, it is a rich archive in different themes for the Visual History researcher, especially for those who choose to study contemporary colonialism. In this paper, our aim is to think about two central figures that are sometimes overlooked: the photographer and the photographic apparatus. Although photography was constructed at the end of the 19th century as an objective and purely technical instrument, it was an important element in framing an imperial world view. However, the camera and the subject who operates it are still sometimes invisible in historiographical discussions and analyses of colonial archives. We therefore propose reflections on this relationship using photographs from the archive that show the apparatus behind their production.