Imagens-memória: narrativas fotográficas da arquitetura moderna de Maceió

Abstract

The city of Maceió, Alagoas, has more than thirty buildings protected by a historical conservation instrument (tombamento), chosen by the state. They were built in different times and, among them, there is only one modernist construction - Palácio dos Trabalhadores - which was protected, mainly, due to its political representativeness of the union force (decree nº 37.934 of 28/12/98). At municipal level, the city currently has 56 Special Preservation Units (UEPs), also composed of buildings from different periods, including those related to the Modern Movement. However, even though some of these are included in the Master Plan’s protection action, part of this modernist group is modified, abandoned and even destroyed, as seen in the recent demolition of the former Afonso Lucena residence, UEP number 27. It is known that safeguarding and preserving the architectural heritage are some of the most common ways to show, from generation to generation, a society’s history. But when the built landscape fades, we have its pictures that, somehow, saves it. Assuming that architecture photography contributes to safeguarding the memory of the city of Maceió regarding the modern heritage, it’s is questioned: how the photographic record helps to preserve the memory of a city? It is believed that photography, as a document, marks architecture in time and makes possible that, even if it ceases to exist physically, its memory can, in some way, remain in history, making the image itself something to be preserved. Thus, this master's dissertation proposes to understand the Modern Architecture’s memory of Maceió through photography and, with this, contribute to the expansion of this movement’s documentation in the city's history. As a starting point, a revision was made, regarding the following subjects: built heritage, time, memory, photography and modern architecture. After that, the search for existing iconographic content of modernity began in magazines, newspapers and books published at the time, however, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was necessary to modify this document source initially chosen and it was decided to use a virtual search in social networks, through posts made about modernism. The dissertation’s outline was defined at this point, gathering the buildings which appeared in the publications. Based on this material, sites were visited with the intention of verifying the current state of preservation of the buildings in question and producing photographic material as a way of contributing to the imagery history of this architecture in Maceió. That way, the approach of photography in this research is justified not only by the relevance in cataloging the contemporary situation of the previously mentioned buildings, but also by making a narrative about modern architecture as heritage, considering that it sets up a landscape that, more and more, dies in the city.