Ricardo Rangel

Ricardo Rangel Achiles (* February 15, 1924 in Lourenço Marques, now Maputo, † June 11, 2009 ) was a Mozambican photographer and photojournalist.

Life

Ricardo Rangel was born the son of a Greek businessman and a Chinese-African mother. He was raised by his African grandmother on the outskirts of Maputo, and visited his parents often, who lived in the interior of the province of Maputo. In 1941, he became an apprentice in Maputo, in the photo lab of Otilio Vasconcelos. From the mid- 1940s he worked in the photo lab Focus in the black and white development before the first black photojournalist of newspaper Notícias da Tarde in 1952. After further positions, he became in 1960 chief responsibility for photo editor of the newspaper A Tribuna, which he left in 1964 for ideological reasons. He went afterwards to Beira, where he worked for various newspapers.

In 1970 he founded with four other journalists, the color magazine Tempo, which extensively documented the country's independence in 1975. In 1977 he became head of the photo editors of the newspaper Notícias and also was given the task to engage in the training of photographers. In 1981, he became chief editor of the weekly Domingo. 1984 created Rangel with the Centro de Formação Fotográfica in the capital, a national training center for photography, whose director he was.

He was married to a Swiss woman named Beatrice. Ricardo Rangel died on 11 June 2009 at the age of 85 years at his home in Maputo.

Reception

Rangel photographed largely black and white. Before the independence of Mozambique from Portugal in 1975, he photographed especially the white city, the city of the colonial masters. Among the main themes of his work also included then the social injustice and the night life of his country. He was also known as a renowned jazz friend with an extensive record collection.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1996 showed his work at the exhibition on African photography since the 1940s. He was also honored at the Biennial "Encounters African Photography " ( Rencontres africaines de la photographie ) in Bamako.

2006 turned the living in Mozambique Brazilian Licínio Azevedo a documentary about the life and work of Rangel entitled Ricardo Rangel - Ferro em Brasa. The title (German: Ricardo Rangel - the hot iron ) alludes to a photo which has become known, was photographed on the Rangel an African boy with a fire symbol on the forehead.