Some 500 years ago, the Portuguese colonised parts of the Malay peninsula, remaining in control for over a century. Today, traces of their presence can still be seen in Malaysia, and more specifically in Melacca, where there is an effort to preserve customs, cuisine and the local Kristang language. On a more intimate level, the history of the Portuguese presence can even be discerned from the faces of the people living in these locations today.
In recent years, architect João Palla Martins has been on a journey to record and present portraits of Luso-Asians, and recently he launched his latest book, Portraits of Luso-Asians of Malaysia. This is his fourth book on the topic, following on from photo books related to Macau (2020), and Myanmar and Sri Lanka (2021).
The book features approximately 100 portrait photos of members of Luso-descendant communities in Malaysia, taken by the author, as well as texts by Ana Paula Cleto Godinho, Director of Macau Delegation of the Orient Foundation, and Peter Zabielskis, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Macau.
“The aim was, from the beginning, to publish photo albums that would reveal the Portuguese presence in Asia mirrored in the faces of the local people,” notes Ana Paula Cleto Godinho in the preface of the book.
Ana Paula goes on to explain that part of the Portuguese strategy of colonisation was to encourage the marriage of Portuguese soldiers with native women, giving rise to mixed-race communities.
“This group of people, spread across different parts of the East with a greater or lesser affective, cultural or religious connection to their Portuguese ancestors, managed to maintain a visible link with their ancestors in their physiognomy,” she explains.
“Leaving aside all the problems inherent to the question of ethnic miscegenation and colonization carried out by the Portuguese, we consider this work a ‘romantic’ way of highlighting and recording, in a photographic way, the extraordinary meeting of peoples resulting from the Portuguese Discoveries. The result of this encounter, conflicting at times, also brought different cultures in different continents into contact, thereby creating new values, new forms of behavior and new religious ideologies.”
In his text from the book, Peter Zabielskis, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Macau comments: “In these faces I imagine I see history […] To my mind as a ‘reader’ of these pages, these are all people I would like to spend some time with, to chat with, to listen to, to hear their stories and maybe some songs (I see some musical instruments), to cook and eat with […] The history and culture of the people shown, their images, their hybridity, their ancestry including their genes – as Portuguese and as Asian – are dimensions that we can begin to listen to, to know and to learn from. None of them, none of this, is as simple as it may first appear,” he concludes.
Published by the International Institute of Macau (IIM) with the support of Banco Nacional Ultramarino de Macau (BNU) and Fundação Oriente.
