FGV shares photo archives of 20th century’s female intellectuals

Fundação Getulio Vargas’ School of Social Sciences (CPDOC) has just released to the public around 1,000 photographs from the archives of the writer Anna Amélia de Queiroz Carneiro de Mendonça and the anthropologist Yvonne Maggie. These photos capture moments of public and private life and they are important records of the experiences of these two female activists and intellectuals in the 20th century.

Carneiro de Mendonça’s archives depict scenes involving her family, their travels, the writer’s collection of works of art and her homes on Rua Marquês de Abrantes and in Cosme Velho (the latter known as “Solar dos Abacaxis” or “Mansion of the Pineapples”). Regarding her political activity, it is possible to find photos of the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress, an organization that played a fundamental role in conquering women’s rights in Brazil, including the right to vote. Images of her coronation as “Queen of Brazil’s Students” and her participation in national and international meetings and events can also be found.

Particularly notable are the photos from an album of a Zeppelin trip taken by Carneiro de Mendonça when she was chosen by President Getúlio Vargas to take part as Brazil’s delegate in the 12th Women’s Congress, in April 1935, in Istanbul. The photos and the first versions of the book “Four Pieces of the Planet in the Zeppelin Age,” also the result of this trip, can be seen on CPDOC’s website.

The photo collection of anthropologist Yvonne Maggie, a scholar of Afro-Brazilian religions, brings together rich content about her research and academic life. There are photos taken during her fieldwork for her doctoral dissertation, which were later published in the book “Fear of Witchcraft: Relations Between Magic and Power in Brazil.” The photos show her together with Afro-Brazilian religious shamans Dona Conceição and Dona Cacilda. The collection also contains photos of objects in the Rio de Janeiro Civil Police Museum and the Estácio de Lima Anthropological Museum in Salvador.

The collection also contains photos of sacred objects seized by the police in candomblé and umbanda religious sites in the early 20th century. The collection was declared a protected item of heritage by the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN) in 1938, under the name of “Black Magic Collection.”

Photos of Maggie’s academic life can also be found. The highlights include photos of the Annual Meeting of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Social Sciences (ANPOCS), held in 1966. There are also photos of events in which policies to fight social exclusion and racism were discussed.

The initiative is part of a series of actions by CPDOC’s Documentation Coordination Department to allow researchers around the world to continue to work on their research despite the social distancing measures imposed by the pandemic. The project is the result of a partnership between CPDOC and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) to digitalize approximately 35,000 pages of text and visual records collected by women in the 20th century. All these documents can be seen for free on CPDOC’s website.

Photo caption: Anna Amélia de Queiroz Carneiro de Mendonça (sixth from the left), Jerônima Mesquita (fifth from the left), Berenice Paes Leme (on the far right) and other women at an exhibition held by the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress in the 1930s.