Crossings of time and look in the journalistic image of precarious lives in “cracolândia” (SP)

Abstract

This article outlines the media representation of the “precarious life”, as Butler (2004, 2014, 2016) defines it, as a form of life deprived of its fundamental rights. The focus is on the analysis of photojournalistic images of two police operations (2017 and 2018) in “cracolândia”, a region in São Paulo's downtown. From a corpus of 109 images published by the news portals UOL, G1, and R7, we selected eight photographs for a closer analysis of elements that tension the biopolitics of control (Foucault, 1980), impersonality, and disregard for precarious lives, with attempts at survival (Didi-Huberman, 2017) and resistance from vulnerabilities. We identified the presence of three main dimensions of representation: (1) although there is six months between the events, media representation follows a similar pattern of representation; (2) the pictures focus on vulnerable, dispossessed life, but also show the defiant and resistance power of faces and gestures; (3) the individual images of suffering, loss, and grievance are counterpointed by hints of rage and reaction. These elements are analyzed in the light of the reflections that intertwine photojournalism with the ethics of responsibility (Mondzain, 2009; Caron, 2007), which indicates possibilities of approaching and meeting otherness.