GUARDIANS OF BLACK MEMORIES: An ethnography on family photographs, kinship and their materialities

• Grant number: 23/16383-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: October 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Andréa Cláudia Miguel Marques Barbosa
• Grantee: Kennedy Anderson da Silva Valério
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to investigate, based on the theoretical-methodological contribution of visual anthropology, how the photographic albums of a poor black family living between the cities of Guarulhos and Lins, both in São Paulo, can evoke vivid memories, based on of the kinship relationship and its materialities. We understand that photographs are polysemic and powerful in their arrangements and overlaps in social relations, and it is in this analytical key that the images of this family are mobilized in this research. Taking into account that the majority of photographs in this family's collection were produced and are cared for by black women, we observe these images in a decolonial movement, revealing new imaginative and visual contours of the relationship between black people and photographs. In this way, discussions about memory, kinship and their materialities support our research both in the relationship with these photographs and in the relationship developed with our interlocutors.