Speaker
Description
This paper examines the construction and dissemination of representations of Portuguese mainland transportation systems by photography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before World War I. It shows how photography naturalised mobility-objects (vehicles and infrastructure) and how it created a new mobilityscape associated with abstract concepts, like progress or modernity. The analysis uses a quantitative and a qualitative approach. Statistical analysis shows what transportation system, type of vehicle, infrastructure, etc. was the most or the least photographed, while a methodology combining Roland Barthes’ semiotics with discourse analysis in journalism searches for the meanings present in the photographic collection. This methodology is applied to a collection of images depicting different mobility-objects published in the illustrated press (namely magazines Illustração Portugueza and Occidente) or kept in several archives. The identification of the signifiers present in each picture (and their captions) supports the classification of the images in different categories, including infrastructure (engineering works, roads, railways, ports, stations, workshops) and vehicles (locomotives, coaches, wagons, automobiles, bicycles, trams, ships, boats). The contexts in which the mobility-objects are included offer another form of classification of the photographs. Those contexts range from construction, to use, assembly, repair, maintenance, special events (reception of kings, for instance), disasters, and landscape shots. The analysis of the photographs’ studium and of written sources accompanying the images paves the way for the identification of signifieds and myths present in the images, promoting the understanding of the creation of meaning and representations about Portuguese transportation systems. This paper adds to the field of history of transportation and mobility using the lens of visual culture. Moreover, it contributes to the ongoing discussion about the utilisation of photographs in historical research as a consistent primary source, much more than an ordinary graphic support.
Biography
Hugo Silveira Pereira is an assistant researcher at CIUHCT (Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia) at the NOVA School of Science and Technology in Portugal and an honorary visiting fellow in the Department of History at the University of York in the United Kingdom. He was a visiting scholar at the MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Porto in Portugal and has published books and articles on Portugal's mainland and colonial railways. His current academic interests include using photography to record activities in science, technology, engineering, and medicine and to create representations of progress.
