Inside Leuzinger's - City, family, traveling and book publishing in the 19th century

• Grant number: 23/02319-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: May 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Heloísa André Pontes
• Grantee: Gabriela Costa Limão
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/00505-2 - The Leuzinger's - City, family, traveling and book publishing in the 19th century, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

This project presents the research about Casa Leuzinger's trajectory. Built in 1940 by the Georges Leuzinger, Swiss photographer and publisher, the Casa - which means House, in Portuguese - had its address in Rio de Janeiro, theme on the most part of its publications. Set firstly in Rua do Ouvidor, the Casa, over the years, had different addresses on this street, or in other parts of this city, where Rio commerce was effervescent. The research aims to explore several dimensions about this publishing house connected to the city's history, the present of the royal family, important social, political and cultural changes during the second half of the nineteenth century. Attached to Casa Leuzinger's life, there was also family Leuzinger's life. Marriage bonds can be understood as status and mobility pacts; the memorialist practice by some women in this family that, on their diaries or on official notebooks made by Leuzinger's publisher, brought family and business together; and the partnership between father and sons that changed the publishing house name - even though it kept their last name. The travels to educate Leuzinger's sons in Europe, born and raised in Brazil, created an important bridge where pictures, people and books passed through. Leuzinger's paternal posture was extended beyond family and reached his job as a publisher. The Casa gathered important artists of that period, mainly foreigners who found there a home where they could speak German, French and Portuguese. Leuzinger's well-cared pictures production and publishing changed and influenced the publishing market and the pictures editing in Brazil, and is archived in Instituto Moreira Sales, which I intend to use as a very import source in my research. Therefore, following notes and critics made by Leuzinger, this research aspires to analyze the pictures of Brazil produced by the publishing house. With all these lines, the main objective of this propose is to discuss the social experience of a group involved in picture editing and book publishing, related to the royal family and artists, and responsible for a great part of the cultural production in the second half of the nineteenth century.