José Veloso de Castro was a multifaceted figure — soldier, cartographer, colonial administrator, postcard publisher and magazine owner — who consistently used photography as a personal and professional tool. An analysis of his life shows how his visual output intersects with colonial administration, publishing and cultural production, while archival traces beyond images reveal a complex, troubled biography that raises questions about power, memory and historical representation. His work is significant for historians of photography, colonialism and cultural history because it documents and shapes narratives of empire even as it reflects the ambivalences of its creator.

This analytical piece examines Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho as a pioneering educator of women whose public achievements were shadowed by private difficulties: her father’s harsh criticism of her poetry and her husband’s betrayal. Drawing on the narratives of Margarida Vila-Nova, Maria João Lopo de Carvalho and Alexandre Borges, the article reassesses how a woman operating within a patriarchal literary culture came to be framed as 'a man of genius', and what that framing reveals about gender, authority and literary history.