‘Abaixando a Máquina 2’/ ‘Lowering the Camera 2’: The Power of Professional Photojournalism in Changing the Course of the 2013 Mass Protests in Rio De Janeiro

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the impact of a set of defining photojournalistic images taken during the mass protests that gripped Brazil’s cities in 2013. These images of the death of a TV cameraman during a demonstration marked a decisive turn in the protest dynamics, resulting in conflicting readings of the protests. These were captured in the documentary film Abaixando a Máquina 2 (‘Lowering the Camera 2’), which we argue offers views of these images and of the wider events that amount to a ‘countervisuality’ that interrogates dominant visual strategies used to marginalise the protest movement. To explore this further, a semiotic analysis of one image from the series was conducted that suggests that although its compositional choices satisfy mainstream news values that served hegemonic media discourses about the protests, it at the same time displays a potential for a countervisuality that condemns the precarious working conditions of photojournalists in Brazil.