XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Tensions and Resistances in Victor Frond's Pictures of Slavery

• In Event: Slavery and Liberation in 19th Century Brazil

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, many European photographers traveled to Latin America to take advantage of growing economic markets. They produced, among others, pictures of enslaved people and free Blacks, which were sold to scientists, tourists, and collectors. Frenchman Victor Frond was the first photographer to record enslaved people in Brazil. He traveled between 1858-59 throughout the country, photographing cities and coffee plantations. A compilation of his photographs was published in 1859 in a book titled Brazil Pittoresco. Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro II supported the publication of this album and possibly facilitated the book's printing.
Recent scholarship has argued that Frond documented Brazilian landscapes and enslaved life in a romantic way, which served the emperor's purpose of creating a positive image of Brazil that could be displayed and promoted inside and outside the country. Frond's lithographs contributed to the emperor's project to create a "geographic imagination" (Natalia Brizuela) and strengthen a national sentiment. However, I contend that while Frond's "picturesque" photographs attempted to romanticize enslaved work, they also show how Black bodies were positioned to the overseer. The controller's constant presence in these pictures contradicts the Brazilian government's claims that enslaved people were passive. Walter Benjamin has argued that photographs always bear an "excess"; that photographic cameras capture more than the eye can see. Frond's pictures captured the tensions between enslaved workers and overseers and contradicted the project the emperor was trying to sell abroad about the Brazilian idyllic slave system.

Author

• Juliana Fillies, Claremont Mckenna College