From illustrated magazines to independent photojournalism: itineraries of photographic practice in Brazil of the 20th century

Abstract

In Brazil, throughout the 20th century, the photographs published on the pages of magazines and newspapers modeled a visual public space, in which facts and photos were combined in the narrative of events. The city of Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian capital until 1960, was the privileged space for the institutionalization of photographic practice, since it was concentrated, since the 19th century, the main photographic studios, as well as the editorial houses responsible for the circulation and sale of prints.

The article addresses the itineraries of public photography in contemporary Brazil. It focuses on the evaluation of the production of a visual public space, valuing three moments in which the photographic practice is consolidated in spaces of the weekly, daily and independent press: the illustrated magazines from the first half of the 20th century, with emphasis on four magazines: "Careta", "Revista da Semana", "Fon-Fon" and "O Cruzeiro"; the photojournalism of daily newspapers, “Jornal do Brasil”and “Última Hora”, in the 1950s and 1960s; and the agencies of independent photographers of the 1970s and 1980s, such as: Central, Angular, F4, AGIL Fotojornalismo, Fotocontexto, among others, acting as important instruments of documentation of social movements, and promoting the consolidation of independent production, the practice of archiving originals, control over the publication and dissemination of photographs. It is understandable that in such spaces public photography was forged as one of the dimensions of contemporary historical experience that relied on the technical image to shape its events. In order to inquire about how history was visualized in each of these domains, it proposes a script that begins with a brief consideration of public photography and visual public space, followed by a reflection on news production in the illustrated weeklies, including the registration of events in the regime of the photographic icons and arriving at the independent photographic practice.

Conceptually, photographic practice is understood as ways of seeing, presenting and representing the social world,  a historical experience that founded the contemporary Western world. The social circuits in photography and their uses and functions multiplied in a visual economy sustained by the technical image as a device for the production of social meaning. In methodological terms, it uses the historical analysis of the primary documentation found in the database of the digital library of the National Library of Brazil and in the archives of the Oral History and Image Laboratory of the Universidade Federal Fluminense. The historical analysis is complemented with an appraisal of the communicative forms and the power of meaning of four photographs, highlighted from each of the historical periods analyzed.