World press photo of the year: a reconfiguração estética do fotojornalismo contemporâneo

Abstract

The present research seeks to analyze contemporary photojournalism from the World Press Photo of the Year, the main category of one of the most important awards in journalistic photography. Violence and human suffering have always been one of the main themes of these photographs, characterizing the Shock-photos model. However, since the 1990s, it has been observed that, although the theme is the same, it is approached in a milder and less explicit way, approaching the concept of Photography-expression advocated by photography theorist, French André Rouillé. Unlike the characteristics of the Peircian index (typical of the analogical format of photography) that the Shock-photos seem to represent, photographyexpression approaches the symbol concept of the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce: they evidence and congregate from the super symbolic context of society. Based on this observation, we could infer that the photojournalism awarded at the World Press Photo of the Year is a product of his time and, for this reason, the fruit of an aesthetic reconfiguration of photojournalism. The methodological path of this work is constituted by photographic analysis from the concept of photography-expression, and the subsequent discussion about its coherence with the characteristics of the symbol according to Peircian semiotics.