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The story of the Nsala photo — Hell in a private colony of a Belgian king.
The English missionary couple were just finishing breakfast when a local man sat down on the porch of their house. The newcomer placed two small objects in front of him and stared at them without saying a word. They were all that was left of his five-year-old daughter — a severed hand and foot.
It is possible that towards the end of his life the unscrupulous king of the Belgians cursed the day photography was invented. At one time he himself argued that his work in the Congo was to open to civilization the only part of the globe that it had not yet reached. Not long after, progress turned against him.
Leopold II Coburg, as he was called, was on everyone’s lips because of intrusive amateur photographers who had the audacity to document the crimes committed in his name by European administrators. For years, the ruler hid the atrocities committed in the Congo from international public opinion, and managed to convince everyone that his enterprise was charitable. The photograph shattered all that like a house of cards: in an instant the image of the benevolent philanthropist that the monarch wanted to be was replaced by a bloody beast.
The thoughts he may have had at the time inspired the famous American writer Mark Twain to write a pamphlet entitled King Leopold’s…
