Experiências do patrimônio urbano de Ouro Preto: fotografias e regimes de visibilidade

Abstract

This thesis investigates the visual construction of the historic urban landscape of Ouro Preto, using as an analytical reference the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Recommendation, approved by UNESCO in 2011. It argues that the landscape is not a natural attribute of territory, but a historical construction conditioned by regimes of visibility that select, reiterate, and stabilize specific representations of the city over time. The research articulates a critical-theoretical approach inspired by Walter Benjamin — especially his concepts of dialectical image and constellation — through the analysis of a visual corpus that includes travelers’ accounts, engravings, postcards, modernist paintings, institutional photography, and contemporary digital content. By organizing these materials into visual constellations, the study highlights continuities, displacements, and voids in the formation of the historical landscape, revealing how certain elements were repeatedly legitimized while others remained marginalized. In dialogue with the stages proposed by the HUL approach — which include identification, mapping, value integration, stakeholder participation, and management instruments — the thesis examines how normative devices and institutional practices incorporate, challenge or reproduce historically established regimes of visibility. It argues that the symbolic centrality of Ouro Preto results from a long-term process of imagistic stabilization, through which the city was progressively transformed into a heritage icon and tourism asset. The study concludes that a critical application of the HUL approach requires making explicit the visual frames that underpin contemporary heritage governance, fostering more pluralistic and reflexive understanding of urban landscape.