Prata da casa: fotógrafos e fotografia no Rio de Janeiro (1950 1960)

Abstract

The current thesis addresses press photography published in Rio de Janeiro's daily newspapers Ultima Hora and Jornal do Brasil that, during the decades of the 1950's and 1960's, have experimented with several innovations in text, layout, business strategies, and image use, especially in photography. In order to stress these transformations relevance, it exams the photographic practice prior to this period among Brazilian newspapers and magazines, as well as comparing it with the image production from abroad. It also argues that the valorization of photography use in this period met both the periodicals and the public's demands, and it attempts to show how a specific language was created in order to attend the newspapers editorial interests, trying to conform the readers to image reading, whilst employing it to differentiate itself from the other newspapers. The thesis also retraces the trajectory of these professionals in charge of the imagetic production, acknowledging that these press photographers, who generally came from adverse social class conditions, meanwhile building a new imagetic language, have edified their own place of distinction within the press and society. Therefore, it understands the decades of the 1950's and the 1960's as a singular moment in the modernization of daily newspapers, being photography and photographers the ones in charge of it, and central to this transformation.