Joao Piña: The Camp of Slow Death

Photographer Joao Piña’s book “Tarrafal” uncovers collective and personal stories related to the eponymous concentration camp for political prisoners in Cape Verde, including the one of his own grandfather

Photographs by Joao Piña

Built in 1936, when Cape Verde was a Portuguese colony, Tarrafal quickly became known as the ‘camp of slow death’. The photographer’s grandfather Guilherme da Costa Carvalho was sent to the camp for his political activity in 1948. A year later his parents were exceptionally granted permission to visit him, and, with the intent of reporting back to the families of other prisoners, they created the only visual record of the camp.

Guilherme da Costa Carvalho, arrested in 1948 for being a member of the Portuguese Communist Party, was sent to Tarrafal concentration camp in 1949, where he spent a total of twenty months, before being transferred back to Portugal. Over his lifetime, he spent sixteen years and six months in prison. © João Pina

One of the shared cells in which prisoners were held in the camp. © João Pina

City of Praia, Santiago Island © João Pina

Upon receiving a box full of these archival photographs from his mother, Joao Piña started researching and recording stories of resistance with other former political prisoners, photographing them, objects belonging to them and what is left of the camp. The book reignites a dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime and the opposition to it on the 50th anniversary of its fall.

A group of Portuguese political prisoners pose for a portrait inside the Tarrafal concentration camp, circa 1949. © João Pina

João Divo Macedo, a Cape Verdean freedom fighter who spent 4 years in the Tarrafal concentration camp in Cape Verde, during the so-called "African phase" of the camp, 1962-1974, when African independence activists were arrested by the Portuguese dictatorship. © João Pina

The book “Tarrafal” is published by GOST and available at the price of 80$.