Photography, ethnography, memory and social imagination

Abstract

This research project arises from the issues raised by previous research (Young Researcher FAPESP), whose objective is a reflection on the flow of identity and alterity created by young residents of a "peripheral" neighborhood in the city of Guarulhos - bairro dos Pimentas . In this research, the photograph constituted an important ethnographic tool and as a way of building the own reflection. It mobilized situations of dialogue between the interlocutors in the field and established a way to express and systematize ethnographic experience. This research process has enabled us to create an image archive with more than 3,000 photographs in which we see a stimulant path for the development of research here proposed.It is relevant to look at these pictures from the way they can talk to each other with respect, but also in relation to what they did talk throughout the field research. It is therefore a research which considers the ethnographic visual material as an archive that has its power set by recreates a place both in time and in space (Edwards 2011, Derrida 2001, Banks, 2011). An rchive that has a biography which suggest some questions: what are the stories told in this set of images? From which place of memory they speak? What are its landscapes and characters? Which tatics emerges from these neighborhood(Certeau, 1994) and expressed the social imagination on images? The proposed research internship in School of Anthropology and Museum of the University of Oxford Ethonography comes in foster closer academic relationships with Professor Marcus Banks and the staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum in addition to supporting this research with privileged access to seminars, library and collections of images housed by this school. (AU)