Documentary photography: an analysis of social issues

• Grant number: 13/25704-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2014
• End date: December 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Welfare Services - Fundamentals of Welfare Service
• Principal Investigator: Raquel Santos Sant Ana
• Grantee: Marcos Antonio Limonti Filho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Currently, is utmost important for the Social work to identify the new expressions of social issues. There with the current research project has as objective to analyze the photography contribution on the social issue concern and its refraction expressed through the professional work. Documentary photography gets to evidence the social issue not just as a snippet of a picture but as a process to be learned about the whole photographic work about a determined reality. Therefore, the analysis will be depth on the basis of a set of collected photos in the book "Terra" from the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. The wealth of information captured by the photographic record can and especially with the Social Service professionals support gets different social realities closer. By providing contact with other reality the imagery message can raise awareness and contribute to awaken a critical view on this spectator viewer. To understand the photography contributions the analysis will be done following the analysis methodology developed by Boni (2000) who works with photographic images decomposition for studying the technical elements and the photographic language. Since the technical analysis on the photographic material a discussion will be done over the elements compounding the social issue expressed on the material which is a study object under the Marxist theoretical background. The objective is to evidence the structural determinants that compose the social issue from their particular refractions as described in the Sebastiao Salgado work.