MPB lenses: criations of the popular in the photography of David Drew Zingg

Abstract

This project focuses on the visual production by North-American photographer David Drew Zingg (1923-2000) related to Brazilian popular music in the 1960s. The objective is to investigate the nexus between certain visual conventions used in photographies of musicians and composers made by Zingg, and the notions of "povo" ["people"] and "nacional-popular" ["national-popular"], current during the period of Bossa Nova's expansion and the institutionalization of the so-called MPB (1962-1969). Known for coalescing both aesthetic and ideological matters in the music sphere, this specific moment in Brazilian history also engendered new regimes of visuality thanks to the development and reach of mass media. Presented and represented in images put in circulation in album covers and illustrated magazines, unprecedented ways of depicting the corporality of artists of different genres and generations informed and were informed by the debate concerning the "popular" and its relation with the "defense" of national values. Although prolific and inseparable from MPB's impact in Brazilian society, David Zingg's visual production remained uncharted if compared to the scrutiny of albums and songs or the sizeable amount of sociological and historical literature. Imbued in other interests, this project gives priority to Zingg's images in order to tackle a notion of creation present in studies on MPB, sustained by a chasm between creativity and technique, and centered in the conundrum between culture's massification and alleged "authentic" musical forms. By focusing on the contaminations between music and image in the configuration of the "national-popular" discourse, I intend on expanding the notion of creation as a means to contemplate the production of corporalities and objects, as well as rethink important dichotomies such as art vs. publicity, originality vs. imitation, national vs. foreign.