Fotojornalismo e Memória no Prêmio Direitos Humanos de Jornalismo (1984 – 1990): Movimento de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (MJDH).

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis intrinsic and extrinsic of the photographs awarded the Human Rights Journalism Award from 1984 to 1990. The analysis shows the development of research conducted by the Masters Course of the Graduate Program in Social Memory and Cultural Heritage at Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel). This proposed work has resulted in two analytical fronts, the first of which consisted of an extrinsic analysis of the photographs, which corresponded to the main features of the photos, such as color, size, whether they were sequential or not, among others. This first analysis provided support for the development of the research instrument, the selective catalog, which corresponds to one of the products of this work. The second part of the analysis corresponded exactly to the purpose of this work, namely to set the relationship between memory, photography and the Award. For this, it was necessary to draw trajectories throughout the work, which were divided into chapters and subchapters, in order to reach the proposed objective, being initially addressed the trajectory of the Award. After that, it was presented some theoretical reference in photography, memory, forgetfulness, dictatorship and archival science. Finally, it was presented a brief history of the Movement for Justice and Human Rights (MJDH), later in this chapter, to bring the discussion on the agenda of the dissertation. Therefore, to understand why the Award was created, one needs to understand the setting in which it was created. It is in a context of struggle and violation of human rights in the final period of military rule in Brazil that the Human Rights Journalism Award was created in 1984 by the Movement for Justice and Human Rights in conjunction with the Order of Lawyers of Brazil (OAB), sectional Rio Grande do Sul, and the State Association of Photographic and Cinematographic Reporters (Arfoc/RS). Thus, the Award has the task of, among others, encouraging reporting of violations against freedom of expression, preventing the past of repression and censorship from repeating today. Thus, the Award, which still takes place annually, aims to honor the most relevant news stories concerning the defense of human dignity, while stimulating the work of journalism professionals in denouncing violations and monitoring respect for human rights. The clipping of the images (1984-1990) was established due to the great number of photographs awarded throughout the 31 years of Award activity, and working with all of them would miss the timetable set by the Graduate Program. The images addressed in the research considered photojournalistic because they are related to daily printed media, and add some shocking and expressive images to society. Therefore, it was concluded through this work, ie, the study of photography in relation to memory, that the photographs in this collection have a historical and cultural value to society, since they reflect the context in which they were registered. Furthermore, they can be characterized as archives records when there is a connection with other documents, since many are linked to news reports. Therefore, after analyzing the photos and the study of the photographs in relation to memory, this work came to the conclusion that the Award has the key role of not letting the movement be forgotten, because the MJDH was created with the aim of helping people during the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil, and even after the end of this regime, the movement continued to act in society in support of human rights.