The imagetics construction of Brazilian elites in contrast to other social groups in the Alberto Henschel and Revert Henrique Klumb photographs: Sociocultural practices and their sense productions

Abstract

Photographs are social facts that represent certain issues in an ideological perspective of reality construction. Its construction and reading are linked to historical, ideological, technological and social facts. The images that representing the social groups are not result of chance, there are a number of sociocultural factors that influence their development, beyond the production of meaning that may be desired and intentional. In this scope, this research aims to analyze and understand how were photographed elites in contrast to other social groups at the time of the Brazilian empire, during the reign of Dom Pedro II, between 1852 and 1885, by the lenses of Alberto Henschel and Revert Henrique Klumb, both official Imperial House photographers that portrayed landscapes, the imperial family, members of the aristocracy, slaves and people from the popular classes. As well, how was made the representation of the economic and political elite, which is the relationship between such production and the historical events, how the slaves and people of the classes are represented and such portraits sense productions.The research use as methodology the analysis of the connotations of the image proposed by Barthes and Eco which indicate a reading on its denotative, structural framework, and connotative sociocultural. In his eagerness to establish itself as a country before the international community, it is plausible to assume that Brazil represented at the images of their elite, slaves and people from working class corresponds to a set of stereotypes there were about him at the period and at the same time, show some aspects still little explored of his society. (AU)