Fotografia da metrópole: fotogenia e aura

Abstract

Street photography or urban photography, in terms of photographic style, historically results not only from a new instrumentalization made available by technological progress in the first half of the XIXth century, but also, and above all, from social and psychological conditions which started to reign in that period. This new way of representing the objective world brought innovative particularities like the combination of elements such as mental image, double, objective traces and aura in one perception object: photography. Such particularities are found in the concept of photogeny, one of the denominations given to the charm of photographic images, which is examined here based on Edgar Morin s studies. The analysis of the concept of photogeny leads us, in search of precursors, to the idea of aura in Walter Benjamin s writings, showing intersections which are particularly interesting and elucidative of both concepts. In Walter Benjamin s reflections are included phenomena such as crowd, shock and flâneur upon which are based our own reflections on the conditions which caused changes in the perception, receptiveness and response of the growing stimuli resulting from new ways of coexistence and mobility in the metropolis. Another approach related to the charm, the aura and the temporality of the photography, such as the temporal punctum, is integrated into these previous concepts and analyzed with the concept of photogeny. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is the constitution of a more embracing corpus enabling the understanding of the complexity of the photographic phenomenon. The metropolis, object of the urban photographer, through its physiognomy, plays a major role in this dissertation, showing itself, like on a photograph, as a psychophysical mechanism whose charm dwells in the indistinguishable relation between the objective world and the imaginary