CITY-PHOTOGRAPHY-MODERNITY Visualizing Antwerp and São Paulo through the lenses of Fierlants (1819-1869) and Azevedo (1837-1905). Gustavo Racy Supervisor Prof. Dr. Paolo S.H. Favero Doctoral Committee Prof. Dr. Luc Pauwels Prof. Dr. Marnix Beyen Prof. Dr. Scott McQuire Doctoral Jury Prof. Dr. Norval Baitello Junior Prof. Dr. Stéphane Symons. The content of this publication may be reproduced with due credits to its author Cover Design: Felipe Racy Dias Printed by Universitas Digital Printing Antwerp Contact : [email protected] Copyright © Gustavo Racy, 2018 Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Communication Studies CITY-PHOTOGRAPHY-MODERNITY Visualizing Antwerp and São Paulo through the lenses of Fierlants (1819-1869) and Azevedo (1837-1905). Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor in the Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp, to be defended by Gustavo RACY Supervisor Prof. Dr. Paolo S.H. Favero Antwerpen, 2018 To Juliana, my fortress. To my parents, to Vivien, Fernando and Arthur. To the one who prophesised I´d be here one day, defending my PhD at 30 years old. You were gone way too soon, but you live in all of us, who had the honour to be your students. Graciela Deri De Codina (in memoriam) A sabedoria mais fina é a que distingue imagens no invisível. José Luis Peixoto Abstract The current research focuses on the nexus between photography, modernity, and the city. Building on a critical exploration of the opus of two mid-nineteenth century photographers – Edmond Fierlants from Antwerp, and Militão Augusto de Azevedo from São Paulo – the study aims to provide a theoretical and methodological dialogue between the field of visual culture and philosophy, especially through a Benjaminian materialist perspective. Inquiring into the origins of photography as a simultaneous product and producer of modernity, the study aims at offering a decentred perspective gathered from two cities which, during the moment in question, could be considered peripheral to the great capitalist metropolises. By addressing a relation dear to visual culture, anthropology, history, urban studies and philosophy anew, the study’s embedded interdisciplinary character aims at expanding, also, the materialist tradition which legacy is attested, still today, in the areas in question. From a re-evaluation of the emergence of modernity to the inquire on the invention of photography, and from there to the analysis of the works of Fierlants and Azevedo, the research draws a historical perspective focused on the importance of vision and the growing centrality of photography. In this perspective, the revolution caused by photography brings attention to the role played by the apparatus in the context of the nineteenth century as, attached to the ruling ideology, progressively turns photography into the main representative of an epistemology grounded on the belief in verisimilitude, realism and truth embedded in visual representation. In this, the need to think the relation between technologies of representation and pictorial traditions, in connection to epistemology and theories of knowledge becomes of prime importance as this articulation shows, ultimately, how photography, exemplified in the cities documented by Fierlants and Azevedo, plays an important role in the ways we perceive the world that surround us. In this, photography shows to be tightly connected to political ideologies, exemplifying how visual technologies may set forth progressive or regressive potentials of our ways of seeing and representing the world. Table of Contents Abstract List of Images ....................................................................................................................... i List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ v Introduction .............................................................................. 1 On methodology: thinking with images. ...................................................................... 5 Knowing where to look. .................................................................................................. 10 Knowing what to look for. .............................................................................................. 17 Knowing how to look. ...................................................................................................... 23 Looking back. .................................................................................................................... 27 1. A Visual Perspective of Modernity ........................................ 33 Charles Baudelaire: on modernity and the role of the visual in the nineteenth century ................................................................................................................................ 33 Karl Marx’s contribution: the political economy of capitalism, power, and vision. .................................................................................................................................. 42 The building of the metropolis and the invention of photography ...................... 59 Uses of photography for nineteenth century political ideology ............................ 73 2. City-photography and the city-photographers ...................... 89 From Street Photography to City-Photography: reflections on a problematic genre .................................................................................................................................... 90 The photographer’s work in the nineteenth century. ........................................... 105 The Photographer’s way of seeing. ........................................................................... 115 Vilém Flusser, Giorgio Agamben, and Walter Benjamin: the apparatus ........ 123 3. The Periphery of the Centre. The Antwerpen of Edmond Fierlants ............................................................................... 137 Antwerp, Belgium: the cultural and political task of photography. .................. 139 Fierlants’ Antwerp: monuments, history and national celebration. ................. 151 Fierlants, and the landscape tradition..................................................................... 162 Fierlants’ Antwerp and the aesthetics of the urban. ........................................... 176 4. The Centre of the Periphery. The São Paulo of Militão Augusto de Azevedo. ........................................................................... 189 Nineteenth century São Paulo, a historical contextualization. .......................... 191 São Paulo’s visual culture during the nineteenth century. ................................ 196 1862, speculations on literary and pictorial trends in Azevedo’s works. ...... 201 The Comparative Album of 1887: a panorama of São Paulo ............................ 229 5. Photography-City-Modernity. ............................................. 261 What is modernity, after all? ...................................................................................... 263 Photography and History ............................................................................................ 270 The Medium and the Apparat .................................................................................... 277 Representation ............................................................................................................... 286 Fierlants’ photographs: thresholds of tradition..................................................... 289 Azevedo’s photographs: physiognomy, panorama and flânerie avant-la-lettre. ............................................................................................................................................ 301 Conclusion ............................................................................ 317 Looking retroactively: summarizing the thesis ...................................................... 318 Looking back: contributions and results. ................................................................ 322 Looking ahead: limitations and possibilities. ........................................................ 329 Looking anew. ................................................................................................................ 334 References............................................................................. 337 Abstract (Dutch version) ............................................................................................... 351 List of Images Image 1. Constantin Guys. "Réception". c.1850/1855 ............................................ 33 Image 2. Constantin Guys. “Deux Grisettes”, pen and brown ink, watercolour, over graphite. 23.3x12.5 cm. Nineteenth century .................................................. 35 Image 3. Rainer Gemma-Frisius. Representation of the observation of a Solar Eclipse through the principle of the Camera Obscura, Holzschnitt, 1545 .......... 39 Image 4. 19th century artist using a Camera Obscura to outline the object. ....... 41 Image 5. John Jabez Edwin Mayall. The Crystal Palace at Hyde Park. Daguerreotype, 1851 ............................................................................................... 47 Image 6. Advertisings for the openings of Grand Magasins de Nouveautés in Paris, ninteenth century .......................................................................................