The visuality of Rio's favelas has been a constant in the iconography of Rio de Janeiro. Photographs, paintings, films, engravings, cartoons, drawings, comics and a series of representations cover the social imaginary and show that the formation of a new urban lexicon to designate urban poverty throughout the 20th century was accompanied by the construction of a visual field. In this communication, we will follow the work of three photographers on the subject of the favela: Augusto Malta, one of the main photographers of Rio de Janeiro and the urban reforms of the first half of the 20th century; Jean Manzon, the French photographer who became famous for producing images of Brazilian modernity and modernisation in the 1940s to 1960s; and João Ripper, the photographer who, together with the Observatório de Favelas (a civil association working in the Maré community), built the Escola de Fotografia Popular in 2004. Using the method of historical analysis of photographic archives, the transformations of photographic practices and the circulation of images and their different cultural appropriations are analysed. The paper mobilises the notion of the "civic pact of photography" (Azoulay, 2008) to relate the meanings attributed to representations of favelas to the forms of governance of an urban social group. As well as having an impact on the analysis of ways of seeing and establishing social control of informal urban spaces, the communication is a dialogue with the renewal of the historiography of Rio's favelas.

Authors:
Samuel Oliveira, Celso Suckow da Fonseca Federal Technological Education Centre, Brazil

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Samuel Oliveira is a professor and researcher at the Celso Suckow da Fonseca Federal Technological Education Centre (CEFET-RJ) and the Federal University of State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio).

Additional website of interest
https://lattes.cnpq.br/1492578610570434

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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