Part of his series on sex workers in Lourenço Marques (published in the 2004 book Our Nightly Bread) was included in the 1996 exhibition In/Sight: African Photographers 1940 to the Present at the Guggenheim Museum. In these extraordinary images, made in the 1960s and ’70s, Rangel’s sensitivity to his subject matter and his affection for the city of his birth are clear. In the nightclubs of Lourenço Marques it seemed possible to put aside the constraints of life in a repressive society. Sailors from international vessels docked at the port made their way to clubs like Casablanca and the Ritz, where they mingled with locals, soldiers, and holidaymakers from apartheid South Africa. Experimenting with fast film, Rangel shot without flash in the clubs, unobtrusively making images that would represent a pivotal moment in the history of Mozambique, between the death of colonial rule and the civil war that followed independence. This work cemented rangel’s reputation as the foremost documenter of Mozambican life, demonstrating his formidable aesthetic sensibility and the humanity that underpinned his images.
in: Aperture
Contemporary Photography Index 