Fotografia, modernidade e infância nas páginas da Revista Paraibana Era Nova (1921-1926)

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to analyze the conscious photographic records that they provide genuine and important information about the subjects and the lived world when considered historical sources. Based on this premise, we sought to investigate photographs that portrayed the childhood of children belonging to the social elites and poor, abandoned and orphaned children from Parahyba, published in the periodical Era Nova between 1921 and 1926, we found that these images of the childhood of the elite sought to reinforce the eugenicist ideology and hygienist widespread during the process of consolidation of the First Republic by broad sectors of the Brazilian media, while the photographs referring to Infância Desvalida seek to present a society concerned with the development of children, a Parahyba structured on benevolence and charity, these images were constituted as a kind of exaltation of the elite class and the State. Everything was organized on the pages of Era Nova to present to the public and keep for later an Image of a modern Parahyba do Norte that day after day was modified according to the process of modernization and urbanization, a process that had as one of the main targets the children, intertwined with meanings and representations, these modifications had the great intention of contributing to the full development of these petyzes whether they are rich or poor, white or black, the city sought to care for and shelter Childhood. This historiographical research was anchored in the plots of Cultural History and in the Studies of Societies with the methodology of the analysis of photographs through the prism of Barthes and Ana Mauad through devices of the cultural filter and intentionalities, in the understanding for the construction of the ideal childhood we will weave a dialogue with Jurandir Freire and the concept of hygienism and eugenics. In the child, the man and woman of tomorrow, of the future, are already outlined, and by what he is today, it is already guessed what the future society will be, that is why childhood becomes the target of the great debates of the authorities and intellectuals of the 21st century. xx, if not cared for and disciplined, the future society would be reserved for failure.