Uma cidade pitoresca? A representação visual dos negros e da capital do império do Brasil nos álbuns de viagem (1845-1861)

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to analyze the image of black people in the royal capital from four travel albums made by European traveling artists. For this, the following albums were selected: Rio de Janeiro pitoresco (1842-1845), by Louis Auguste Moreau and Louis Buvelot, Panorama de la ville de Rio de Janeiro (1845), by Iluchar Desmons, Rio de Janeiro e seus arrabaldes (1856), by Pieter Godfre Bertichen and Brasil pitoresco, by Victor Frond and Charles Ribeyrolles (1861). In these albums, until the 1850s the image of black people was abundant, but after that, it became scarce, making the presentation of the imperial capital more modern and civilized – that is, more European, as defined by Celeste Zenha. This was due to two reasons: the rise of saquaremas to power and the proclamation of the 1850 Law, Eusébio de Queiroz Law, which prohibited the slave trade. Those albums present many different perceptions of the artists about the life of black people, such as: clothing, work activities, festivities, punishments, presence of family ties, hierarchies. Furthermore, it is intended to understand what these aspects meant for the representation of the city of Rio de Janeiro, as well as to analyze in which places black people were represented and in what situations. With such objectives, the proposal of this dissertation is in line with the studies of Visual Culture, in order to think about the production of the image from its own time. The concept of representation is added, as said by Roger Chartier, considering the image not as a representation of the real, but as a field of social disputes.