The City as Photographic Text: Urban Documentary Photography of São Paulo

248 Pages·2021·10.023 MB·English

by  David William Foster

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Latinx and Latin American Profiles
Frederick Luis Aldama, Editor
C I T Y

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DAVID W I L L I
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NIVERSITY OF PITTSBURG H P R E S S
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2021, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4623-6
ISBN 10: 0-8229-4623-8
Cover photograph: Hildegard Rosenthal, Vista noturna do Viaduto do Chá / Night view of the
Viaduto do Chá, circa 1939. São Paulo, Brazil. Instituto Moreira Salles.
Cover design: Alex Wolfe
To all my students, as always.
•
David William Foster
1940–2020
Gentle friend, sage guide, agile mind, passionate soul, explorer and
creator of new venues of knowledge and affection,
David gave us all our wings.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
Part One: Modernist Discoveries
1. Hildegard Rosenthal Discovers Brazilian Modernity 13
2. The Factory Floor as Urban Plaza in Hans Günter Flieg’s
Photography of Industrial São Paulo 27
3. Thomaz Farkas and the Estádio de Pacaembu:
A Theater of Brazilian Male Homosociality 43
Part Two: Shifting Perspectives
4. Above the Madding Crowd: Cássio Vasconcellos’s Aerial São Paulo 61
5. Urban Dynamics: Four Photographers 78
The Urban Panoramic of Juca Martins 78
Mauro Restiffe and Fading São Paulo 94
Ana Lucia Mariz and the Hidden Ruins of São Paulo 104
The Provincial Photography of Cristiano Mascaro 110
6. The Problematic Vernacular Photography of David Drew Zingg 117
Part Three: Megalopolitan Problems
7. Breaches in the Walls: Carlos Cazalis Photographs São Paulo 133
8. Unhiding Urban Madness: The Asylum Photographs
of Claudio Edinger 149
viii CONTENTS
Part Four: Living São Paulo
9. Humanity in the Megalopolis: Affective Photography 167
Alice Brill 167
Lily Sverner 181
10. Loving the Cancerous Body: Valdir Cruz’s Affective Photography 189
Conclusion 203
Notes 207
Works Cited 225
Index 233
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was made possible by the programs of Arizona State University,
which has always been very generous with its support. I am grateful for strategic
and technical support from the following research associates: Gabriela Don-
go Arévalo, Beto Ortiz Mansanilla, Mariana Ruiz González Rentería, Patrick
Thomas Ridge, Thomas Shalloe, Diana Díaz Gómez, Jesús Galán, and Frankie
O’Neill. I am deeply grateful to my excelsior first reader, Patricia Hopkins, who
thinks that periodic prose should be banned (at least, mine), and also to Cynthia
M. Tompkins, my second reader and sometime academic accomplice. Finally, my
Brazilian Studies colleagues Lígia Bezerra and Clarice Deal are constant inspira-
tions for any substantive knowledge about Brazil I might have. Lígia also looked
at the manuscript with an eye toward expunging cultural misinterpretations.
Four of these essays have previously appeared in print in somewhat different
format:
“Hildegard Rosenthal descubre la modernidad.” Cuadernos del CILHA, vol.
20, no. 30, 2019, pp. 17–30; “Breaches in the Wall: Carlos Cazalis’s Photographs of
São Paulo.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, vol. 22, 2018, pp. 135–50;
“The Photography of Thomaz Farkas and the Estádio de Pacaembu.” The Rout-
ledge Companion to Gender, Sex and Latin American Culture, edited by Frederick
Luis Aldama, Routledge, 2018, pp. 273–83; and “Unhiding Hidden Urban Mad-
ness: The Asylum Photographs of Claudio Edinger.” Revista letrônica, vol. 12, no.
3, 2019. Escola de Humanidades, http://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.
php/letronica/article/view/35337.
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