Impressões do Amazonas (1851 a 1910): memória gráfica e o desenho do circuito de comunicação impressa

Abstract

The motivation for carrying out this work came from the identification, by the author, of the opportunity to advance in research on graphic production in the Amazon as a contribution to the history of Brazilian design and material culture. It was intended, specifically, to describe the process of installation and development of the graphic production activity in Amazonas from 1851 to 1910. The methodological basis adopted is inspired by the studies that have been produced by the group Memória Gráfica, from which they were improved procedures and techniques for collecting, analyzing and filing the studied artifacts. Most of the printed products analyzed are newspapers, in addition to government editions and leaflets, magazines, almanacs, advertisements and ephemera. Despite the heterogeneity of the artifacts found and the wide time frame, we tried to unify the registration model to preserve the different data on their gra-phic production and the professional circuit to which they belong. This allowed the investi-gation, together with several references and works, to articulate the study in three arcs that seek to better characterize the stages of development of the graphic activity in Amazonas, namely: (I) source print – initial phase with the first milestones since the installation from the pioneering typographic workshop (1851) and the emergence of the first agents of the printed communication circuit to the establishment of activity and the beginning of the diversification of the printed product with the landmark of registering one of the first literary editions of Amazonas (1869); (II) the typographic establishment in two times – a stage observed from a greater number of available sources, almost always newspapers, and in them the advertisements, notes and graphic information from 1870 to 1889, which provided a more detailed narrative about the graphic professionals and the expansion and modernization of the circuit, despite the existence of old limitations; (III) impressions from belle époque – a period of intense commercial exchanges and great material progress in Manaus with direct consequences for the expansion, moderni- zation and specialization of the graphic activity through the use of new printing, composition and image reproduction processes, which required greater planning of printed products published with great expertise and better finishing from 1890 to 1910. The thesis also provided the organization and visualization of scenarios and information produced from the records in the forms and notes taken from other sources, such as the extensive use of the platform of the digital collection from Biblioteca Nacional of Brazil. When studying the graphic memory and the design of the printed communication circuit in Amazonas, it was observed the expansion and several changes in the typographic landscape and in the local printed culture in the interval of just 60 years. A movement that the research captured in several impressions that also chronicle the economic, social and cultural development of the Amazon region.