Abstract

SALGUEIRO MARQUES, Ângela Cristina; BIONDI, Angie  and  DA ROSA, Ana Paula. Political Appearances of Extra Actors Subjects in Photojournalistic Images of Massacres in Two Favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2022, vol.42, pp.93-111.  Epub Feb 25, 2023. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.42(2022).4011.

Based on theoretical-critical arguments from the field of communication and aesthetic experience, this text analyzes a set of journalistic photographs about two police operations in Rio de Janeiro, one at Complexo da Maré in 2014 and the other at Jacarezinho in 2021. In all the images, we noted that the residents appear as extras in the field of action of security agents in operations generally mediatized. The analysis exercise observed that apparitions of the extra end up destabilizing the biopolitical frameworks of photojournalism, which try to prevent the perception and apprehension of subjects and ways of life disregarded by hierarchical and asymmetric recognition conditions. Thus, we reflect on how the visibility conditions of the journalistic context can be altered by the presence and apparitions of ordinary people in photographic images, coming from the presence of bodies and people in their daily chores, through gestures and glances, and unpredicted reactions which, once registered, interfere in the images’ enunciative regime. Finally, the text reveals how the political and aesthetic power of the appearances in the figurations can highlight the nuances between the visible and the readable, allowing the opening of a fracture in the devices activated to read a certain situation, corporealities, and gestures in the images.

Keywords : photojournalism; extra actors; political appearance; police operation; Brazilian favelas.

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