The registration of the limits of the city: images of the Carmo Meadow in the 19th century

Abstract

This work examines Sao Paulo's iconography in the paintings, water colors and litographies of the 19th century. Departing from the ascertaining of the existence of a privilege of the city's surrounding areas, particularly the Carmo Meadow, and of this permanence yet in the turn of the century, when the city goes under an urbanization process and special growth, and photography is registring the central areas, we wanted to investigate the meanings of these representations. Not only the presence of this space - the Carmo Meadow - in the imagery of this period (chroniclers, legislators, memorialists) but also the images of the city that have been made from this point of view. We have chosen to analyze some images of this area, focusing on the end of the century, in a counterpoint to works depicting the same region by chroniclers, journalists and memorialists, in an attempt to understand a little more about the society that had produced them.