O processo fotográfico excludente do negro em Alagoas: composição de uma ideologia sem preto (1890-1920)

Abstract

The present work seeks to analyze, understand and problematize black photography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Alagoas. Analyzing its uses as historical source and social construction of the image of the black in the imaginary of the receivers of these photographs. It seeks to understand how black is portrayed in the studied period, as well as to discuss its presence/absence in these photographic cuts. From Flusser concept of technical image, photography is discussed as an idealized and ideological product of the ruling class. For this purpose, the photographs were retrieved in the public physical and digital archives of Alagoas, developing reflections from these images in consonance with the historiography of the Negro, to try to understand the place of this, in the society of Alagoas. In this way it is intended to discuss in the work how the black was photographed in the studied period, searching for traces of its signs and signals in these technical images. For this purpose, we tried to implement Carlo Ginzburg's method of the indiciary paradigm, together with other methodologies described in the paper. From these questions we intend to understand how the image of the Negro was built in post-abolition. In this sense, it is intended to raise discourses about the use of photography as a historical source, trying to treat it as a dominant ideological production, loaded with meanings, symbologies, made to program who sees them. Studying these images led us to understand that the Negro in post-abolition continued, at least in the rescued photographs, portrayed as residual beings. It is noticed that the photographic technique in Alagoas does not differ much of other regions of the country. The black Alagoas in the studied period is often silenced/erased from the photograph. Your image does not fit in the black box. But, it is understood that its resistance and historical protagonism are so strong and real, that even without being the main subject, by reprogramming our gaze we can see its signs of resistance.