Encarnado: corpo político na fotografia

Abstract

This study considers the political power of images of the body from photography practiced mostly in Brazil and other Latin American countries. It focuses on the expressiveness of performances of the body that have been made invisible or censored by repressive and controlling policies. Thus, the analysis utilises historical documents, media and artistic materials that have the body as it central theme, questioning the photographic language and the gestures from which it is derived. The concept of body image is established as a means to inform theoretical and historical discussions, since it is set in the photosensitive surface of the experience of memory. Following this reasoning, this paper focuses on contemporary artistic work that, in the understanding of the writers, uses the performed photography to enlighten political agendas. Based on a non-chronological historical extract, photography is investigated through a dialogue with neoliberalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy, and other tangential subjects to the construction of the image of the civilised individual, supposedly male, white and heterosexual. The thesis is that the photography of the body is an instrument for political influence, able to anticipate or inform political discourse. This creates a fertile environment to practice and reflect about hegemonic as well as diasporic identities, images that continuously modify our day to day actions and the way we read alterity