Title   Lembranças, Souvenirs, Recuerdos Fotografia e Emigração Portuguesa para o Brasil (1860-1960) (Original)
          Memories, Souvenirs, Recollections Photography and Portuguese Emigration to Brazil (1860-1960)
Author  Ana Filipa Gandum
Advisor  Margarida Medeiros e Maurício Lissovsky
Year  2019
Institution  Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FCSH), University Nova of Lisbon
Degree  PhD
Area  Artistic Studies, specialization in Art and Mediation
Keywords  Photography, Migrations, Brazill, Missive
URI http://hdl.handle.net/10362/66892

Abstract

This thesis addresses the concept of ‘recordação’ based on photographs related to the phenomenon of Portuguese migration to Brazil, from the late 19th century until the middle of the 1970s. These photos appeared within the context of a three-year research in personal and family archives, and were initially ways to deal with the transatlantic distance, in an intimate circle, during a period when postal services represented the major means of communication. In order to do it, I employed historical and anthropological methodologies, namely a participant observation method, within a narrative device of migration stories and memories based on photographs. Those stories were not only told by those persons who migrated based on photographs displayed at their homes, but also by their relatives and descendants. The photographic correspondances, the memorabilia, and the photo identification displayed in this thesis, are understood in relation to their role in identitary individual processes of subjectivation and mnemonic excavation. The analysis of these photo souvenirs has also mobilized the concepts of archive, of memory and ‘recordação’ as a particular gesture and a temporal-affective experience specific to this kind of circulation of the technical image.