On modernity in the streets of São Paulo c.1900: what can postcards express?

• Autores: Fraya Frehse
• Localización: Anuario americanista europeo, ISSN 1729-9004, Nº. 1, 2003 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Escribir la ciudad latinoamericana. Miradas cruzadas), págs. 59-85
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article aims at �writing the Latin American city� from a particular temporal- spatial perspective. By concentrating on everyday life in the streets of São Paulo at the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it makes use of contemporary photographic view cards in order to draw attention to specific sociocultural aspects of the Brazilian city overwhelmed by 19th-century urbanisation and modernisation amidst the abolition of slavery. What do photographic postcards especially from the turn of the 20th century express about modernity in the (officially post-slaveholding) streets of São Paulo at that time? The ways the images and written messages address circulations and interactions of passers-by contain clues to streets strongly marked by an anthropologically very meaningful coexistence of modern ways of circulating and old ways of staying.