O despertar de uma consciência crítica sobre a transformação urbana: o photovoice como um importante instrumento de investigação e diálogo

Abstract

This dissertation starts from the debate about the city and its quick transformations over the centuries, and it is not new that this new condition came to influence, in a permanent way, the way of thinking and acting of human beings. For this reason, the need for a critical reflection on the surrounding world becomes imperative, which is why artists, architects and sociologists have risen in search of strategies capable of understanding contemporary society and remedying the consequences experienced in the urban environment. This study focuses on the role of photography as an important imagery resource capable of awakening critical awareness of urban transformation. In the urban context, in addition to its representative character, photography also becomes a strategic research tool capable of dialoguing with different social actors through participatory approaches such as Photovoice. In this perspective, Avenida dos Aliados, due to its condition as a public space with intense flows and a civic center, was chosen as an experimental laboratory to be analyzed through this visual strategy, portraying, in a critical way, the confrontation of the various perspectives of urban space. For the application of these premises, different profiles of users present in this urban environment were characterized - resident, visitor, tourist and worker - in order to answer, through photographs, questions based on the relations of preservation, degradation and urban transformation contained in the object of study. These answers proved to be an engine for the identification of new issues related to the space in constant transformation, elucidating the different ways to identify problems and act in contemporaneity. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to stimulate a critical and participative dialogue about spaces from this unconventional reading, in order to contribute to strategies capable of questioning and rethinking the urban territory.