Living images of past worlds: the allegorical reminiscences in the photographs of downtown Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil

Abstract

The article intends to dialogue with the idea of time and allegory in Walter Benjamin as instruments of analysis of photographs of landscapes of downtown Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil. In the theses on the concept of history, Benjamin (1987) writes that the true image of the past goes quickly through the times, since the past gets fixed as an image that flashes irreversibly the moment it is recognized. Methodologically, we chose to photograph sceneries in downtown Florianopolis to discuss Benjamin’s ideas on allegory, bringing these images as guiding threads regarding his thoughts and the history of the city. As a result, we identified that the architecture of the buildings and the monuments of the city’s squares are constituted by fragments of the past that remain in the present, having also observed these permanences in the people that circulate and the routine that occupies the space.