[Brazilian Indiology: literature, photography and cultural otherness in the work of the Austrian Mario Baldi]

Abstract

This article concerns photographic and narrative experiences of the Austrian photographer Mario Baldi, who worked among Brazilian Indians in the first half of the twentieth century. Baldi wrote a book about his relation with the Carajá and published it both in Brazil and Germany. This analysis aims to compare both versions of the book and consider the innovations and limits of the representations made by Baldi about the cultural otherness in Brazil. These representations, shared by both Brazilian and German authors, were influenced by an ethnological romantism, the so-called Brazilian Indiology in the 1940's and 1950's.