Abstract
This chapter focuses on the impact of a set of defining photojournalistic images taken during the mass protests that gripped Brazil’s cities in 2013. These images of the death of a TV cameraman during a demonstration marked a decisive turn in the protest dynamics, resulting in conflicting readings of the protests. These were captured in the documentary film Abaixando a Máquina 2 (‘Lowering the Camera 2’), which we argue offers views of these images and of the wider events that amount to a ‘countervisuality’ that interrogates dominant visual strategies used to marginalise the protest movement. To explore this further, a semiotic analysis of one image from the series was conducted that suggests that although its compositional choices satisfy mainstream news values that served hegemonic media discourses about the protests, it at the same time displays a potential for a countervisuality that condemns the precarious working conditions of photojournalists in Brazil.
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Notes
- 1.
Mídia Ninja is the acronym for ‘Independent Narratives, Journalism and Action’ whose digital media coverage of the ‘Brazilian Spring’ in 2013 and 2014 received copious attention (e.g. Rodrigues & Baroni, 2018).
- 2.
O Globo. (2014, February 6). Manifestação contra reajuste de passagens se transforma em protesto violento na Central. O Globo. Retrieved from https://oglobo.globo.com/rio/manifestacao-contra-reajuste-de-passagens-se-transforma-em-protesto-violento-na-central-11527254.
- 3.
According to Cano (2013, p. 183), ‘Around 2006 the term “militia” was coined in Rio to describe groups of armed state agents (policemen, prison guards, firemen, etc.), who took control of small territories, charging residents and small business owners a fee in order to “protect” them, and monopolizing most economic services and transactions’.
- 4.
Regarding the changes facing Rio de Janeiro’s urban order during the 2014–2016 mega events, please see Ribeiro, L. C. D. Q., & Santos Junior, O. A. D. (2017). Neoliberalisation and mega events: The transition of Rio de Janeiro’s hybrid urban order. Journal of Urban Affairs, 39(7), 909–923.; Maharaj, B. (2015). The turn of the south? Social and economic impacts of mega events in India, Brazil, and South Africa. Local Economy, 30(8), 983–999.; Saborio, S. (2013). The pacification of the favelas: Mega events, global competitiveness, and the neutralisation of marginality. Socialist Studies, 9 (2), 130–143.
- 5.
In ‘Shared Photography’, we however show how favela photojournalists in Rio employ alternative news values in documenting structural violence, while also capturing some of the ‘beauty’ of these communities (Baroni & Mayr, 2017).
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Baroni, A., Mayr, A. (2023). ‘Abaixando a Máquina 2’/ ‘Lowering the Camera 2’: The Power of Professional Photojournalism in Changing the Course of the 2013 Mass Protests in Rio De Janeiro. In: Veneti, A., Rovisco, M. (eds) Visual Politics in the Global South. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22782-0_12
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