Fotografias do limiar:

dicotomias, fabulações e temporalidades intervalares em imagens de famílias empobrecidas durante a Depressão norte-americana dos anos 1930

Abstract

During the vigence of the Farms Security Act of 1936 and of the Farm Security Administration (an agency linked to the New Deal and created in 1937), designed by the USA federal government to help poor rural workers in the country and in the city, an extensive project of documentary photographs was carried out, recording the situation of families at that time. Part of these photos focused on people looking out of windows, a relatively unusual choice in photographic aesthetics. Based on the analysis of 16 images with this theme, this article argues that the images reinforce two spatial and temporal dichotomies: the ambiguity between “public” and “private”, because the windows are thresholds between what is inside and outside, and also the division between "past" and "history", like those images, originally created as contemporary portraits of a situation, over time became documents of an era in the past. In addition, it is evident how these border images promote fabulations and intervals that make impoverished people appear at the intersection of other times and spaces. The adopted approach continues the discussions previously carried out by the authors on the description of life forms, vulnerabilities and resistance of people in precarious situations.