Ardem as imagens: dispositivos Yanomami de retorno e retomada no (contra-) arquivo fotográfico de Bruce Albert

Abstract

This thesis examines the process of visual return to the Yanomami people of the images taken by anthropologist Bruce Albert. These photographs were produced in the Yanomami Indigenous Land (TIY) between 1975 and 1984. The return took place mainly among the Yanomami of the Kawani community, located in the Novo Demini region, Barcelos (Amazonas), as well as in Boa Vista (Roraima), and was grounded in an ethnographic research involving: the Yanomami notion of photographic images and their restrictive practices concerning photographic capture and erasure; Indigenous participation in decision-making processes and in reclaiming photographs from the archive; narratives of both Indigenous people and the ethnologist-photographer that emerged through encounters and misencounters with the photographs in past and present historical contexts. The process of visual return highlights how Yanomami photographic and filmic images (utupë) activate kinship relations between the living and the dead, territorial connections, conceptions of the body, health and illness, and negotiations with the non-Indigenous world. It follows that, the research emphasizes the contribution of Yanomami dispositifs – oriented by the erasure of images – to the formulation of a photographic (counter-)archive.