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The Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire of Círio De Nazaré in Belém Do Pará – Brazil

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The Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire of Círio De Nazaré in Belém Do Pará – Brazil DOI: 10.14393/SN-v33-2021-61610 Received: June12, 2021 |Accepted: July08, 2021 | Published: August 13, 2021 Photographicity: the Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire of Círio de Nazaré in Belém do Pará – Brazil Raimundo Freitas Aragão1 Christian Dennys Monteiro de Oliveira2 Tiago Vieira Cavalcante3 Keywords: Abstract Photographicity Photographicity is, resembling humanist photography, geographicity Círio de Nazaré in poetic images, photopoems. The stages for this essay are the Poetry enactments and performances of Círio de Nazaré festivities in Belém Geographicity do Pará. In order to identify and make this photographicity real, we Humanist photography first focus on the development of humanist photography as inspiration. Second, we deal with the geographicity or the singularity of human life in relation to the mode of spatial existence based on social practices. Finally, we turn to poetry from the Amazonian aesthetic poetic imaginaire through the concept of semiotic conversion understood as the symbolic change in the cultural context. Methodologically, the photographicity of Círio de Nazaré will be built on the intersection of humanistic photography, geographicity and poetry. From this intersection, the objective is to expand and encourage humanist geographical analyses in human landscapes. 1 1Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. [email protected] 2Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. [email protected] 3Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC, Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. [email protected] Soc. Nat. | Uberlândia, MG | v.33 | e61610 | 2021 | ISSN 1982-4513 ARAGÃO; OLIVEIRA; CAVALCANTE. Photographicity: the Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire INTRODUCTION the pathways disseminate various enactments around the sacred, the religious mystique is renewed, projecting, in the images of the Círio, In photographing a given event, we realize how the devotional essence of its people. expressive and dynamic its movements are. This In the context of the reach of this is because a photograph, despite revealing to us simultaneously concrete and imaginal world, a scenario and a moment, urges us to imagine photographicity will be built methodologically landscapes and instants of an imminent on the triangulation between humanist becoming. A photograph, then, is not simply a photography, Dardelian geographicity (2011) frozen image of space-time; it is also movement. and the aestheticizing poetic imaginaire, A religious festival, for example, enhances considering João de Jesus Paes Loureiro’s these movements. The religious seems to frame (2015)concept of semiotic conversion as a ever more performances, rites, pious and starting point. However, despite the neologism carnivalesque scenarios in a single space-time, photographicity, we do not intend to present considering that sacred and profane, since the epistemological results. We propose, rather, earliest times have acted in common accord. from this intersection, to reflect on the These are the new orders of the symbolic, crafted importance of geographic space in its various at the time when new landscapes are being apparent forms, while all of this emerges to our created or readapted. The Círio de Nazaré, in eyes, before, during, and after the the metropolis of Belém, is a fantastic photogeographer triggers their camera. experience for the geographer-photographer, a The photographs and their images, which we subject we call a photogeographer, for we agree will maintain in black and white, respecting the with Reis Junior (2014) when he writes that the monochromatic period representative of photogeographer, even if not a professional humanist photography, will be our documental geographer, contributes to the science of the support. When captured in their authenticity, landscape and what it demonstrates of the they constitute primary elements of research. relationships established between nature and That is, they instrumentalize perception, culture. comprehension, and geographic reflection Belém, the capital of the state of Pará, because they connect the production of ideas, as founded on January 12, 1626, has become one of argued by Gomes and Ribeiro (2013). In this the most important and significant Brazilian sense of a methodological cluster of ideas, hierometropolises–reinterpreting, on a photographicity takes shape, inclined to metropolitan scale, the term developed by demonstrate a form of multidisciplinary Rosendahl (1999) –built on the symbolisms and intelligibility, representative of the organization imaginaires surrounding the mythical Christian of geographic space, or rather, of the subjects in figure of Catholicism, Our Lady of Nazareth that space, actively building it. (Nossa Senhora de Nazaré). Since the Photographicity, in this essay, comprises a appearance of Mary in 1793, relationships of methodology of access to the Círio de Nazaré singular religious belonging have been built festivities as an integral human landscape. Its upon the city, referenced by numerous works procedures involve cultural elements in their such as Alves (1980; 2005) who characterizes the permanence, transformations, and full Círio as a dense fusion of faith, devout carnival, adaptations of humanism, thus the strategy of drama, joy, and keen feelings during the intersecting humanist photography, festivities. The urban structure and geographicity, and poetry. The Círio de Nazaré organization where the festival’s performances is poetry in movement and geography in action, unfold clearly depend on the symbolisms and the moving between two worlds: the earthly and the imaginaires that lend it support. There is no imaginal. organization or dynamic of the religious in We have, then, the first part of this essay, in urban culture without this utopian drive, be it which we lay out the paths to be taken. In the visionary or spiritual. second part, we will compare humanist Though the festivities may be brief, photography to the notion of geographicity, experiencing this ambience of the religious life examining their interfaces. Subsequently, we of the city allows us not only to observe the will present the central idea of photographicity, faithful in search of their private, concrete world how it was conceived and constituted, by means but also to witness their desire to reach a world of images and the imaginaire surrounding the beyond, the world of celestial figures. Thus, in Círio de Nazaré. Lastly, we will present our final the metropolis of Belém and its streets, where considerations. 2 Soc. Nat. | Uberlândia, MG | v.33 | e61610 | 2021 | ISSN 1982-4513 ARAGÃO; OLIVEIRA; CAVALCANTE. Photographicity: the Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire Humanist photography and some lyrical vision of man supported on the idea of a interfaces with geographicity universal human nature (MAILLET; DENOYELLE; VERSAVEL, 2006). (...) humanist photographers, whose Régis Debray (1993) asserts that this school creative epicenter was Paris, exalted life – was ostensibly French and Parisian and and peace –, producing images of contributed to the construction of a national anonymous people in daily urban life. The iconography. What the humanist photographers photos were closer to capturing the human had in common was their interest in human essence than the objective images of the beings immersed in their habitual life, as press (AVANCINI, 2011, p. 58). previously mentioned. They captured scenes from ordinary people’s lives, both in their simple The epigraph above opens the way for existence, full of joy, as well as of hardships and interfaces. We believe there are convergences injustices resulting from economic woes; thus, between humanist photography and photography was used as a reaction to the geographicity, because one can see in them a atrocities of the years of war. Another proximity phenomenological synthesis of the human that should be considered is the publication of essence in its spatial existence, with the L’Homme et la Terre, by geographer Eric Dardel exaltation of territorialized life in space. (2011), a work of great relevance for humanist Humanist photography and geographicity geography, which occurred following World War address the same things, for both have as their II, at the peak of humanist photography. central objective human beings and their Moreover, according to Debray (1993), a relationships to the environment in which they national ethnography or anthropology of live. For Holzer (2016), for example, proximity was practiced, the focal point of which geographicity has a direct connection to daily was the social life of the subject. Human beings life, much as, in our view, the issues that are considered invisible, their jobs and daily life, concerned humanist photographers did. the rituals, the celebrations of cultural Considered a school of photography, traditions, political manifestations, picturesque humanist photography was born in the 1930s in figures and couples, portraits of artists and France, specifically in the city of Paris. It intellectuals (Figure 1) were introduced reached its height between 1945 and 1950, (AVANCINI, 2011). In this context, while extending into the 60s. It received this humanist photography centered on people in denomination for its strong and incontestable their environment, it focused acutely on the inclination toward the human being in both the most disadvantaged, clarifies Paviot (2019). professional and the affective frame. All its representatives shared an essentialist and Figure 1 - Photo A: The brothers, rue du
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