A collection of photographs taken between the end of the 19th century and the mid-20th century serves as a counterpoint to the journalistic discourse of the period on the daily life of black people in Porto Alegre (Brazil). The scenes photographed by the Ferrari Brothers, Virgilio Calegari and Lunara, show aspects of the poverty in which blacks lived following the end of slavery: they invariably appear shoeless, wearing worn and untidy clothes and living in squalid domestic environments in squatter settlements; there are children working at odd jobs. In the discursive space of the local newspapers Gazetinha, Jornal da Tarde and O Independente, blacks were represented as vagrants and associated with "dangerous" parts of the city. Their visibility in the photographs and invisibility in the press produces a discontinuity in the huge photographic archive of this period, which consists almost exclusively of landscapes and portraits of the bourgeoisie. It is argued that the Ferrari Brothers did not limit themselves to photography as a documentary practice, but deployed it as a way of recognizing the social realities of their time.
