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]

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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.

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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 Docteur Lecène Street, Paris, 1934. Photo B: The carpenter in rue Saint Louis in Isle, 1947.

Source: Doisneau (2014-2020).

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One could wonder, then, if humanist were part of a whole. As Pidner (2017, p. 310, photography is not a way of revealing author’s emphasis) indicates, in discussing geographicities by means of an image and even geographicity in landscape-photography, “What the imaginaire that an image holds, by is visible in the detail reveals the subject deepening the existences of the being-in-the- photographed, and that is also the landscape, world, “(...) starting from the postulate that the but equally refers to the invisible spatial context logical unit of existence is neither space, nor in which those subject-bodies are inserted and time, nor society; it is the human person, it is the with which they experience their spatial individual taken in his phenomenological practices”. Paviot (2019) further spotlights some relation to the world” (LÉVY, 1997, p. 28, affective values captured by the humanist eye of translated). After all, humanist photography the photographer: tenderness, optimism, poetry, and humanist geography resemble each other in nostalgia, naiveté, humor, generosity, beauty their shared interest in their subjects’ actions hidden in reality, and permanence behind and their choices in society, in their space-time, change. considering value systems, preferences, beliefs, Humanist photography took place in the etc. Geographicity and, in this context, same period as the height of document photographicity, therefore, can be understood as photography, the latter directly linked to the human beings’ modes of existence and destiny. informative press. In discussing these two The environment-subject pair, this technical moments, or rather, two cultures in inextricable relationship, was primordial for relation to their mediaspheres, the humanist photography just as it is for graphosphere and the videosphere, Debray geographicity. Humanist photographers (1993) lists a series of qualities of humanist highlighted both the private and public life of photography, compared with what he human beings’ actions as they built their spaces; denominates humanitarian photography, as indeed, they made great use of depth of field follows in Chart 1. perspective to capture the environment and the human motif being photographed, because both

Chart 1 - Some fracture lines between two cultural moments of photography. HUMANIST PHOTOGRAPHY HUMANITARIAN PHOTOGRAPHY Authentic, honorable. Moving, highlighting disease, hunger, values. Part of the Graphosphere. Part of the Videosphere. Has a rich cast: work, love, play, Its subject is imposed, in the manner that friendship, celebrations, infancy, beauty is through fashion photos. spectacles. Belongs to the universe of artwork. Belongs to the universe of documents. Poetic scoop or genre photo. Journalistic scoop or photojournalism. The work is signed. The work is credited. Typographical edition, geared to books, Televisual, with no depth of field, collective albums, newspapers. or individual. Through cinema and poetic realism, Direct, literal, and somewhat dry. humanist photography supports the performing arts (on stage or in the street). The visual is under verbal control and the The verbal is under visual control with a caption is incorporated into the photo. caption under the photo. The individual is not isolated but rather Man is removed from himself. The inserted in their place in the group, individual is a body without a history. family, city. Humanistic face like that of an urban Urgency gives individuals meaning, in the landscape, with an ample background. face of desolation and lack of values of their own. Source: Prepared by the authors based on Debray (1993).

The distinctions presented by Debray (1993) figures maintained their dignity. These humans are reinforced by the fact that humanist were not abandoned as bodies with no history, photography set its focus on the hope of a better separate from the world. Photography captured world. Even in a time of social upheaval, human humans carved into a family, a social class, a

4 Soc. Nat. | Uberlândia, MG | v.33 | e61610 | 2021 | ISSN 1982-4513 ARAGÃO; OLIVEIRA; CAVALCANTE. Photographicity: the Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire place, an event and, therefore, they had identity rejecting voyeurism and sensationalism, and (Figure 2). Humanist photographers were had an optimistic view of human beings considered peace correspondents, they held (MAILLET; DENOYELLE; VERSAVEL, 2006). great respect and empathy for their peers,

Figure 2 - Photo A: Baron William and his footman, Paris, 1955. Photo B: The tramps’ cats, Paris, 1950.

Source: Doisneau (2014-2020).

If humanist photographers intended to Geographicity and the semiotic conversion reveal the poetics hidden in the heart of the most of the poetic imaginaire into photopoems banal reality or help us experience the wonders of daily life (MAILLET; DENOYELLE; An active city is not an inert space, but a VERSAVEL, 2006), then it becomes essential to space that moves, a space that lives this essay to capture a double meaning, imagetic (DARDEL, 2011, p. 14). and poetic, of the festivals as a sensory form of experiencing the Círio de Nazaré. Precisely An active city means that it is human in because the “poetic realism”, as humanist different shapes and degrees. A city is idealized photography is known, is considered a blend of by people according to their intentions and social realism and poetry of the quotidian. In motivations. This is a crucial issue in this sense, geographicity and poetry blend with understanding the photographicity of the Círio humanist photography to give photographicity a de Nazaré, in Belém do Pará. It is during the “body and soul”, a way of capturing through Círio that Belém pulses in living and active photography, what Dardel (2011, p. 30) poetry and images. We refer to this merging of expresses when addressing landscape: “[...] a the photographic eye with poetic creation as union, a convergence, a moment experienced, an photopoems. This creation brings to mind the internal connection, an ‘impression’, that unites “santinhos” (little saints), long-popular leaf lets all the elements”. of prayers alongside images of patron saints. We move on, then, to the “poetic scoop” of However, it also evokes modern images, which Debray speaks, making use of the lens of multiple digital screens, like a sort of infosphere the photogeographer. (following the perspective of Debray), in the expansion of social networks. Each photopoem requires a representation of photographicity

5 Soc. Nat. | Uberlândia, MG | v.33 | e61610 | 2021 | ISSN 1982-4513 ARAGÃO; OLIVEIRA; CAVALCANTE. Photographicity: the Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire capable of registering this snapshot in the and of festivity. The festival is now universal, enlargement of the reverence imagined therein. inscribed by UNESCO as an element of The photographic eye dynamizes devotional Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013 and geographies in poetic forms, even in snippets of deserving of safe guarding. This makes the text. human pulsation a multiscale projection (both From the frantically human pulse, breaking local as well as global) of the festival’s radically with the repetition of ordinary days, in representations in the liturgy of images. We sinuous construction and performative observe this performative return of the Saint bricolage, one perceives a dual exercise, of and her procession to the Basilica (Figure 3). compression and expansion, of collective faith

Figure 3 - Our Lady of Nazareth in performative return to the Basilica.

Source: authors’ image bank (2014).

What do we have in the alignment of the crowd, the palanquin draped in streamers, and On the frontier of the tangible world, where trees above on a higher plane? A play of human activity is inserted, and the indistinct space and time, where stages are built imaginary world, opening its symbolism to and performative images are reproduced in the freedom of spirit, we find here the these scenes and scenarios as a festival. Space- interior, primitive geography, where time is impelled and played to more subtle original spatiality and the profound spheres during the celebrations. The taper, in its mobility of man draw, trace paths to simplicity and liturgical expression of the another world (DARDEL, 2011, p. 8). paschal candle, in common ecclesial time and in the mystical space of a historic Amazonian This is an important phenomenological capital, finds in Nazaré a Great Ritual Taper. content of Dardel’s (2011) geographicity: In the Círio, the commonplace world, or the revealing the apparent and hidden symbols of empirical world of sensory perceptions, and the the Earth, its essences; after all, to him, the imaginal world (CORBIN, 1976), or the world is writing that must be deciphered, intermediate world, the interworld, where the seeking to account for the continuity or archetypal figures are, the “subtle bodies”, meld reinterpretation between things and the fusion together. The reach of the imaginal is not pure of man and Earth (RAFFESTIN, 1987; LÉVY, fiction. Despite being directly inaccessible, it is 1992). Geographicity is a complementary real in the sense that it is maintained by attitude between science, personal observation, traditions in its “visionary or spiritual utopias” and poetics (HOLZER, 2016); elements that (WUNENBURGER, 1979; 1985; 2002a; 2002b; need to walk hand in hand. Thus, the concrete 2003). The Círio is a variation of these two world related to the Círio and the imaginal interconnected themes of utopian worlds world that fuels it, are not distant from one because they are symbolic motifs feeding on the another; between the two lies a tenuous and mythical-prophetic imagination or religious surmountable frontier fed by the visionary or images of the other world. spiritual utopias (Figure 4).

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Figure 4 -Performative scenes fed by the spiritual utopias.

Source: Authors’ image bank. Photo: authors (2014).

Raffestin (1987) perceives this in Dardel’s Amazonian sources, in which the myth reveals thought in observing that there is no rupture or itself as a metaphor for the real. discontinuity between myth and symbols, Creatively, he says, the Amazonian man between religion and logic, because, Dardel, he navigates a sort of sfumato, a mist that blends says, pursues a totality. Furthermore, the the real and the unreal flowing into a unique mythical space does not mean a confusion of reality. In this fusion, the poetic vibrates and places, because it is conditioned by a hierarchy involves the entire Amazonian cultural of values that start from a center. As atmosphere. Loureiro (2015) proposes, then, the geographicity is also a poetic attitude, its concept of semiotic conversion in the sense of a literary expression lends necessary support to passage “[...] through which functions are photographicity. This idea is renewed here in realigned and expressed in another cultural with the proposal of the photopoems presented situation. The semiotic conversion means the subsequently. chiasmus of symbolic changes in a cultural relationship at the moment in which a In photopoems, the photographicity of João transfiguration occurs” (LOUREIRO, 2015, p. Loureiro’s Círio. 61). There is no better way to present this In the book Amazonian culture: poetics of the semiotic conversion of the aestheticizing imaginaire (2015), João de Jesus Paes Loureiro imaginaire than by using his poems. In them, addresses what he calls the “aestheticizing human and environment, alive, are in poetic imaginaire” present in the Amazonian movement, captured by the natural ocular cultural system. machine of the poet and taken to the brain João de Jesus Paes Loureiro. Poet, prose where they are processed and transformed into writer, and essayist. Professor of Aesthetics and an intellectual abstraction. The imaginative Art. The universality of his poetic work is built power of the poems illustrates the aestheticizing on symbols of the Amazonian world – culture, imaginaire of/in the Círio. The poet pursues the history, imaginaire – propitiating a cosmovision symbolic dimension of a specific culture. He and a unique reading of the contemporary world. brings our attention to and uncovers the mist In a dialogue with the main literary sources and that pervades the layers of realities built on the trends of present times, Paes Loureiro creates staged paths of the festivities. His symbolic original work, almost a poetic summary of language is a path between the real and the sensory understanding of the world through unknowable, which also becomes real. In the exchange between poetry and

7 Soc. Nat. | Uberlândia, MG | v.33 | e61610 | 2021 | ISSN 1982-4513 ARAGÃO; OLIVEIRA; CAVALCANTE. Photographicity: the Human Landscape in the Poetic Imaginaire photographicity – as a photopoem– one work, in a sequence of seven compositions in complements the other and the sfumato photopoems (Figures 05 to 11), aware that this provides the texture of the Círio. The projection technique of the humanist performative spaces brim with the festive photographic regime has plenty of room to potentiality of faith in rites and registers of the expand on other fronts of cataloguing and imagination. Human and humanism become contemporary analysis of the geographic metaphors. Loureiro’s Círio is science. phenomenologically, at the same time, Figure 5 associates the poem “The Taper” to existential and natural. Human beings and a hub of procession followers, dense and nature merge, producing spaces and territories teeming, like fish in the "current of a river with in each place it is enacted. soul and devotion", a “school of songs” carried by While not a geographer, though we may treat the “underwater waves”. A devout river, him as such based on his personal or vernacular incapable of being fully understood only in terms geography (MONNET, 1999; COLLIGNON, of the millions of visitors in the procession. We 2005; CLAVAL, 2010), Loureiro’s poems have a know that other Círios, in the countryside of geopoetic character, because they shed light on Pará, before and after the Belém October, attest the spatial “novelty differential” by means of a to this capture of the collective body “navigated poetic and existential geography. As Lévy (1992, by faith”. However, the current captured in the p. 29, translated) states, “What could be more local snapshot synthesizes this first humanist normal, for an art of expression, poetry, which is scale. There is no Círio do Nazaré festival meant to create new images, set our imagination without collective connection. Individuation is ablaze and renew our perception, than to leave apparently exclusive to the Saint in the an original mark?” The search continues, then, palanquin, though this is only the impression of for the “geopoetic scoop”, composing the text of the inattentive eye that sees/senses the whole visual poetry. without observing the details. We now take a fresh look at João Loureiro’s

Figure 5 - The Círio is a multitude of walking waves. A river of the devout.