Self-image, photography and memory: contributions of former-interns of the Aimores Asylum-Colony, SP

Author(s)

Daniela Lemos de Moraes

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Artes
• Defense date: 2005-08-26

Examining board members

Etienne Ghislain Samain; Claudio Bertolli Filho; Margareth Brandini Park

• Advisor: Etienne Ghislain Samain

Abstract

The present research consists of a visual-anthropological study of the representations of life constructed by aged, former-interns of the old Aimorés Asylum- Colony (nowadays Instituto Lauro de Souza Lima), victimized by an illness - the leprosy, today know in Brazil as hanseníase - and for a regimen of compulsory internment that invigorated in the State of São Paulo between the decades of thirty and sixty of the last century. For such, we use as origin point photographs deriving of three sources, distinct and complementary: 1) photographs of archives, mainly of the Instituto Lauro de Souza Lima; 2) present photographs of the former Asylum-Colony taken by the researcherphotographer; 3) photographs of personal archive of the studied group. We fundamentally work with images, as a medium capable of reflecting - also - together with words that suscitate, fragments, frames of a institutionalized past of how these people lived and how day-by-day life was for them, modified, in greater or minor degree, by the isolation and the decurrent incapacities of the illness. In this aspect, we argue the role of the image which makes possible to trace an new approach when correlated with the testimonies. Besides working with two supports of the communication human being (the oral and the visual), we contemplate as heuristical background the reflections of the historian of sciences Michel Foucault and of sociologist Erving Goffman, which offer a new kind of lens, guiding us to a better understanding and visualization of this space (AU)