In the extreme border of the visible: discourses about national identity in photo reports of Pierre Verger in O Cruzeiro (1946-1951)

Abstract

How do the photographic reports of folk festivals in the northeast ofBrazil, made by Pierre Verger for the magazine O Cruzeiro (1946-1951), relate to the construction of the Brazilian nation in the “Vargas Era”? To answer this problem question, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) points out one way: through the speeches. It is intended, in this work, to discuss what the contributions of Pierre Verger photo reports were, in order to build a national identity from 1946 to 1951. Those photographics published in O Cruzeiro suggest an array of invisibility and visibility by articulating the discourse of the State, the magazine and the photographer himself (“author”), forming a network, without, however, making evident such operation or restrict it to what is inside the imaging picture. Nonetheless, it is about imprisoning such photographs in a pedagogical discourse proposed by theNewState, because, at the same time, they show an effort to escape from the episteme of the time.