Portraits of a city: the photograph in the paper Paraná-Norte (1943-1953) and the magazine A Pioneira (1948-1954)

Abstract

The city of Londrina (north of Paraná State) emancipated politically on December 10, 1934, five years after the arrival of the pioneers of the Companhia de Terras Norte do Paraná (CTNP) - mostly English owned company that began colonization in 1929. In October 1934, two months before being elevated to the status of municipality, was born the first communication vehicle in the city, the newspaper Paraná-Norte. Present from the beginning, the press reported on its pages the transformations that city suffered through the years, being a document of important historical value. This study therefore aims to analyze the beginning of the trajectory ofLondrina's press from the place occupied by the image in the pages of the city's first newspaper, Paraná-Norte (1934-1953) and the magazine A Pioneira (1948-1954). To understand the importance of photography published in such vehicles as trace for writing the history ofLondrina, it employed some research methodologies. The first was the literature, followed by the documentary analysis (MOREIRA, 2009) for all editions of the newspaper and magazine available to the public consultation, which allowed to write about the history of the two media pioneers. Already a comparative study of photography in Paraná-Norte and A Pioneira was done by iconographic analysis, proposed by Kossoy (2001). Faced with the impossibility of studying the universe of photographs published by two journals, we chose to select, via random draw, one copy per year of circulation newspaper and magazine. Thus, the study focused on 18 editions of Paraná-Norte (for the years 1951 and 1952 there are no copies available) and 7 of the magazine A Pioneira. Drawing on theoretical frameworks that deal with interfaces between story and image, press photography and memory, portraits and family albums, we conclude that, although the use of imagery has been explored differently by the two vehicles, even because of difficulties technical and financial, in both, the goal was the same: propagandize personal contributions, people, progress and local development.