Ricardo Rangel

afronova gallery, ricardo rangel, sad eyed model in this street of merry making, 1962, hand printed fiber base silver gelatin print

With Euro-Afro-Asian roots, Ricardo Achiles Rangel was born in Lourenço Marques, now Maputo, in 1924. He died in 2009.

Rebel and sensitive, with a willing strength that bordered on stubornness, he managed, as a teenager, to enter in a photographic laboratory as a dark room assistant, he was later promoted to printer and eventually as the first non-white photo-reporter in the early 50’s.

Rangel documented watershed moments in Mozambique’s troubled history under colonial rule, the lenghty liberation war, until the independance in 1975. He thereafter declined to be an official artist for the revolutionary government and focused on his photographic work as he assumed the direction of the Centre of Photographic Formation in Maputo.

His work is documented in numerous publications and has been exhibited around the world. The series “Our nightly bread” on Maputo’s prostitutes, spanning 20 years, is regarded as a masterpiece of African photography.

WORKS

OUR NIGHLY BREAD