Representations of North American Public Health: the photographs of Geraldo Horácio de Paula Souza, 1918-1920

• Grant number: 19/19712-7
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2020
• End date: October 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning - Fundamentals of Architecture and Urbanism
• Principal Investigator: Cristina de Campos
• Grantee: Cristina de Campos
• Host Institution: Diretoria de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação. Universidade São Judas Tadeu (USJT). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Maria Gabriela Silva Martins da Cunha Marinho ; Marko Synésio Alves Monteiro
• Associated scholarship(s): 21/06812-3 - Georeferencing and analysis of photographs from the Geraldo Paula Souza collection., BP.TT; 21/04038-9 - Analysis and description of the set of photographs from the Geraldo Paula Souza collection., BP.TT; 20/14386-1 - Treatment, digitization and analysis of the set of photographs from the Geraldo Paula Souza Collection, BP.TT

Abstract

By the end of the nineteenth century the industrialized western world was building sanitation networks in their cities. The establishment of such networks stimulated the development of new technologies and the organization of academic disciplines focused on these complex infrastructures, committed to solving the problems imposed by urbanization. A collection of photographs dating to the late 1910s, authored by Professor Geraldo Horacio de Paula Souza (1889-1951), allows not only understanding the importance of such infrastructures to cities, but how a new field of knowledge was structured and directed for urban health: public health. The objective of this research is to organize, digitize and analyze this set of unpublished photographs, which capture several cities of the United States of America and their respective urban infrastructures. The photographs were taken by Paula Souza himself during his PhD in Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Our understanding is that these images are part of Geraldo Paula Souza's academic and professional training in Public Health, field of knowledge for which this professor was one of the main propagators in Brazil. This research also aims to create, from the digitized material, a database to shelter these photographs. Duly organized and analyzed from the perspective of authors who emphasize the importance of photography as a documentary source, the final result of this historical research project will be the publication of a book with texts and images. (AU)