PEASANT VISUALITIES:

BETWEEN CARING AND IMAGINING

Abstract

The ground marked by furrows made by the hoe suggests the care and imagination of peasants working with the land. Inspired by rural labor, this visual essay presents fragments of life and what emerges from rural daily life. The set of images stems from a doctoral research project carried out in the Zumbi dos Palmares settlement (RJ) between 2019 and 2025. Presented in still form, it is the result of videos shared by one of the settlers and participant in the research, whose voice, gestures and images reveal techniques, poetics, gestures and work practices that evidence the knowledge and intelligence of the worker. His contribution is one fragment among many that make up the research, which was developed through a participatory methodology and dialogues with studies of Visual Culture, Teaching and Spatialities. Living with agrarian reform settlers enabled the elaboration of the concept of peasant visualities, understood as aesthetic and educational actions, spring from life in the countryside, announce dreams and denounce inequalities. The sequence of images participates thus integrates the investigation and, in addition, affirms a popular visual praxis, rooted in the countryside as a territory of formation and reexistence. They suggest understandings of the settlement's ground as a poetic, aesthetic and educational action. The essay challenges hegemonic gazes upon rurality and proposes a visuality committed to valuing peasant culture, the social justice and the dignity of life.