Towards a(n) (Audio)Visual Ethnography of the City

Fernanda Aguiar Carneiro Martins1,2

(1. Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, France; 2. University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France)

Abstract: In the 20th century’s first decades, photographers and artists becoming filmmakers lead themselves into a new adventure: they would elect cities or, more precisely, urban spaces (areas, streets…) to play a protagonist role in their filmic experiments. Caught by the desire of creating images able to translate the “dynamics of the metropolis” — focusing their individuals and central thoroughfares, places of residence, employment and leisure, these productions were edited in a certain temporality. Here, we pose a question on what consists the photographic matter itself which appears intrinsically intertwined with the filmic fabric. The photographic essay Cachoeira, Cinza, Preto e Branco (“Cachoeira, Gray, Black and White”) and the short film Cachoeira, Sinfonia de uma Cidade (Cachoeira, Symphony of a City, 2015, 3 min 36) are founded on this basis. Produced simultaneously, this photographic essay and the short film point also to a possible dialogue between image production, anthropology of the image, visual anthropology and urban anthropology as well as a theory of the image itself.

Key words: city, experimentalism, photography, cinema