Photografy, time and history education: joints for significant learning

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a methodology which uses photography in the classroom as a way to provide meaningful learning about historical time. This methodology was developed from a research project within the Postgraduate Program in History of the University of Caxias do Sul – Professional Master's degree – applied at Escola Estadual Técnica Caxias do Sul, with 3rd-year high school students. The research is established by the perception that photography is a historical source because it is a human production in time and, as such, can be observed as a document / monument, according to Le Goff (1996). At the same time, by being able to provide meaning and significance in the one who observes it, photography acquires a language status, a non-verbal, semiotic language. We analyzed photography in these two senses – as a historical source and as a language – and, together, we used Kossoy's (2007) assumptions about the deconstruction of this imagistic source, through the analysis of its iconographic and iconological aspects. In practice, students had to analyze photographs of their past family holdings in counterpoint with photographs produced by them at the present time. By this, they constructed legends in the form of historical narrative that privilege historical time in its multiple dimensions of ruptures, permanence, transformations and continuities.