Picturing the Legend:Photojournalism and Mistery in the Farroupilha Imaginarium

Abstract

While researching the journalistic coverage of myths and legends, it was realized that there was still a question whose debate was needed: how to produce journalistic photos covering those themes? Which rationalities are operant while picturing such object, hesitating between the pressures of the field (objectivity, news values) and the enchantment peculiar to the legend being represented? We looked for those answers in the reporting series called “Farroupilha Imaginarium”, published daily over a week by the newspaper Zero Hora in September 2014. It was possible to identify in those pictures a recurrence of symbolical and compositional elements of ascension and contradiction, focusing on places – not on people – while facing the double challenge of covering the untouchable with the journalistic language without lowering the legend’s mystery potential.

Keywords

• photojournalism
• image
• imaginary
• folklore
• legend