Photographs by Guilherme Glück: a methodology for analyzing the photographic image of the cultural landscape of Lapa, PR, Brazil

Abstract

Abstract: In a world full of images, we often do not realize the number of images that invade our context. However, it is noteworthy that a countryside village, such as Lapa, in Paraná state, had the presence of a photographic studio. Certainly, the relationship between Foto Progresso is not merely a fancy name for a photo studio. It is rather a latent desire for the conquests of modernity to also reach the inner city. In proposing this research, which objectifies to investigate the urban transformations, as well, that occurred in parallel by the presence of the photographer Guilherme Glück, it is to understand how the urban and cultural landscape were portrayed in his photographs. This study object is delimited by Glück's records from 1920 to 1950, in the urban environment of the city of Lapa. These spaces were registered for various reasons, presenting the temporal transformations, in the yearnings to change and update Lapa as a republican city and adapted to new urban infrastructures, such as piped water, paved streets, electric power, new means of transportation and communication. Through the systematization of the photographic methodological analysis, from iconographic investigation proposed by Panofsky, observing Cassirer's symbolic forms, through which he presented the advances in Cosgrove's research, it is intended to analyze Glück's images in a context of a city ​​eager to incorporate republican and “modernity” standards.