The memorial to the first president. De Mayda says travelling in Luanda as an outsider is difficult: ‘Every time I was taking a picture someone was asking me to delete them. People told me they were part of the ‘secret police’. ‘One day in the middle of nowhere I found a political meeting of the Movement for Liberty of Angola (MPLA) party and the situation was very interesting: flags everywhere, huge [president] Dos Santos portraits, people climbing the trees to see the speech. As soon as I started shooting two big guys took me away and asked to delete all the images’