<aside> 📷 Photography [ fuh-tog-ruh-fee ]: write with light.
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The image is the base unit of captured light on film. Distinct from the moving image, photos freeze motion and time to capture action by exposing a material with light. When the shutter button on an analog camera is pushed, the photographic film inside is exposed to light passing through the lens, causing the formation of a latent image. When the shutter button on a digital camera is pushed, the sensor, a semiconductor with millions of photosites, absorbs the light passing through the lens and saves that information as digital data.$^2$
Similar to the first exposures taken by analog or digital cameras, this section serves as a first exposure to the history of the photojournalism of afro-brasileños.
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Pushing propaganda: the daguerreotype
The daguerreotype requires the treatment of a silver-plated copper sheet to make it sensitive to light. The plate is then exposed to light within a camera, producing a latent image, and neutralized by chemical treatment, producing detailed images with some dynamic range in light.$^3$ A fifteen-year-old Dom Pedro II ascended to the Brazilian throne in 1841 and immediately seized the opportunity to use the daguerreotype, a newly-introduced photographic process, to his advantage. Marc Ferrez, a young photographer, used the daguerreotype process to photograph enslaved Black people laboring on coffee plantations. The Center for Agriculture and Commerce (Centro da Lavoura e do Comércio), initially created to propagandize the Brazilian coffee industry to international consumers, hired Ferrez to wash the image of Brazilian plantations. Pedro II, so impressed with Ferrez’s work to rewrite slavery in Brazil, hired him as the official photographer of the Brazilian Navy.$^4$
Enslaved people at a coffee yard farm, Vale do Paraiba, São Paulo. 1882. Marc Ferrez. Courtesy of Instituto Moreira Salles/Getty.
Ferrez’s daguerreotype of enslaved workers in a farm in São Paulo, just six years before the abolition of slavery in Brazil, features diffuse light from the overcast weather and low and high contrast areas of the image. This diffuse lighting lowers detail and makes distinction of the facial expressions of the field workers difficult, flattening their individual identities. Additionally, the distance from the subjects inhibits the viewer from forming emotional connections with the subjects. The image is almost tranquil, unremarkable, successfully achieving the goals of the Brazilian imperium.
First photograph of work inside a gold mine. 1888. Marc Ferrez. Courtesy of the Gilberto Ferrez Collection/Getty Research Institute.
Ferrez’s consistent use of diffuse lighting to obscure distinguishing features of Black laborers continued with photos of other production sectors in Brazil. Here, the low light information in Minas Gerais gives the photo painting-like qualities. Although this can be attributed to the low light quality in the cavernous gold mines, the decision to capture enslaved Black laborers from a distance divorces the viewer from the labor. Ferrez seems to align Black labor and mistreatment with industrialization. Critics describe Ferrez’s photography as “one expression in an ongoing story of erasures, silencing, and the gradual death of the earth.”$^5$
Today, the ecological effects of continued gold mining, a vestige of colonial Brazil and a persisting part of Brazil’s production economy, continue to harm Black and Indigenous communities in rural Brazil, as seen in the image of Minas Gerais today.
Aerial view of mine, Southern Brazil. 2019. Michael Naify. Courtesy of The Independent Photographer.
At the local level, politicians in swelling urban landscapes used photographers to revitalize the image of their cities. Francisco Pereira Passos, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro from 1902 to 1906, enlisted Augusto Malta to spearhead the photography arm of an urban gentrification program, Bring It Down (Bota-Abaixo). Mayor Passos pushed for the demolition of tenements, inns, and temporary housing, depicted below, to compete with bustling cities like Paris, likening Rio de Janeiro to a “tropical Paris.”$^4$
The demolition of the temporary housing and apartment buildings displaced many Black working class Brazilians. Additionally, a subsequent rush of migration into city centers following Bota-Abaixo between the 1940s and 1990s saw intensified poverty due to insufficient housing and low employment, creating the perfect conditions for the rise of favelas. The displacement of Black Brazilian laborers then continues to leave a marked impact on quality of life and housing for Black Brazilians now.
Castelo hill demolition with water water jets, view taken from Santa casa de Misericórdia. 1922. Augusto Malta.
Candomoblé: the backbone of Black Brazilian labor-class culture
The inherently unsustainable nature of the chattel slavery and the strip mining industries contrasts with persistent and foundational Afro-Brazilian religious traditions. T. Jean Lax, writing for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), observed the integral role that Black Brazilian religions, such as candomblé, play in sustaining Black Brazilians and their culture:
In Brazil, Black religious practices historically took on Christian symbols out of a need to survive, finding refuge in Catholic aesthetics. When I visited the Candomblé group Irmandade da Boa Morte (the Sisterhood of the Good Death) in Cachoeira, I was surprised to arrive at a reconstructed church nave. This group has been led by successive generations of Black women since its founding around 1820, and when they finally secured the means to build a bespoke space in the early 1990s they opted to recreate the baroque architecture associated with Catholic sites of worship and aesthetics. As Valmir Santos (one of the only men in the group) explained to me, the cover of Catholic symbolism allowed enslaved people to gather and sustain themselves, creating unlikely plans for their future through mutual aid that paid for festivals, masses, clothing, purchases of freedom, and funerals. A good death, indeed.$^6$
Depicted below, the members of the Irmandade da Boa Morte embody survival and honor for tradition, reflective of their continued efforts to concretize their sisterhood in a church building. The adoption of Christian symbolism as a protection mechanism to practice their religion reflects the repressive nature of colonizing forces on expressions of Black Brazilian spirituality. As in many Black diasporas, religion is the driving force gluing the labor-class together.
Members of the Irmandade da Boa Morte (Sisterhood of the Good Death). 1994. Adenor Gondim. Courtesy of the MoMA/Adenor Gondim.
Candomblé Opo Afonja, Salvador. 1950. Pierre Verger.
In one of his many works documenting Candomblé practices, renowned photographer Pierre Verger captures lights and shadows falling on the focused face of a young, working-class practicer of Candomblé. Afrobrasileños often remain in connection with their ancestral lands and spirits. Candomblé was only officially recognized in Brazil in 1946 , despite its widespread following, highlighting the criminalization of expressions of Black spirituality. For working-class Black Brazilians, practicing Candomblé, which still faces oppression today, is a critical form of cultural expression.$^7$
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