SUJEITOS AMAZÔNICOS NA FOTOGRAFIA CONTEMPORÂNEA

Em busca de uma constelação de imagens

Abstract

This article analyzes the representations of Amazonian subjects in images produced by contemporary photographers and visual artists dealing with themes such as death, regional life, and typically Amazonian places. Drawing on a heterogeneous body of photographic and pictorial works, it seeks to understand the construction of representations of the human body and nature, focusing on the artists' perception in their process of capturing the physiognomy of the regional people. The analytical trajectory is guided by the concept of "image constellation" as formulated by Aby Warburg, which conceives images as a network of tensions and anachronisms. To support the reading of these representations, the article draws on Erwin Panofsky's contributions on iconographic tradition and Boris Kossoy's notion of absent links in the photographic image. The article traces a path from the first ethnographic photographs produced in the nineteenth century, through Brazilian modernism and its representations of the caboclo, to the documentary and engaged photography of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, demonstrating how the figure of the indigenous person and the Amazonian subject moved between the roles of scientific specimen, romantic hero, and victim of colonial structures.