O álbum de fotografias do inglês George Chalmers: memórias e lembranças no tempo do Morro Velho

Abstract

The dissertation presented here was initially based on the discovery of the lost photograph album of the Englishman George Chalmers, superintendent of the British company Saint John Del Rey Mining Company. In the album, we found personal photos of Chalmers with his family and acquaintances. Photographs of English practices and customs were photographed in Morro Velho in Nova Lima and at Fazenda da Jaguara in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The research has as its object of investigation the photograph album of the Englishman George Chalmers, with his memories of the time he spent in Morro Velho, from 1884 to 1928. We discussed and analyzed several photographs, both of open pages of the album and by theme, and through comparative assessments of the photos with English paintings from the 19th century that were inserted in the same environment of cultural influence. During the research, we found an Englishman with imperialist and colonialist habits, living in the interior of Minas Gerais. His photo album preserved his way of seeing the world and testified to the professional work of the photographer who managed to reproduce images of values, customs and sociability of a time. We conclude that the photo collection presents us with the characteristics of an English man who knew how to preserve his Victorian habits, in the domestication of dogs, in his hunting and fishing practices. A British man culturally focused on representing his masculinity to his children based on his traditional habits and customs. A man who contemplated nature, collected family photos and had scenes created from what he found different and exotic in the animal world, in the wild, in the attitudes of dogs and in the appearance of black people who were part of his daily life.