São Paulo: Perspectives on the City and Cultural Production

7. Madalena Schwartz: A Jewish Brazilian Photographer

98 7 Madalena Schwartz A Jewish Brazilian Photographer Madalena Schwartz (1922–93) belonged to a generation of European photographers , in large part Jewish or Jewish-identified, who ended up working in Argentina and Brazil after fleeing Nazi persecution. Grete Stern (1904– 99) is unquestionably the most famous of the group (see Foster, “Dreaming ”), although Annemarie Heinrich (1912–2005) is also considered a fundamental figure in the history of Argentine photography, partially because she was something like an official photographer for Eva Duarte de Perón, whom she had first photographed as the ingénue, Evita Duarte. Heinrich, unlike the other persons mentioned here, was not Jewish: in fact, she was often accused of holding pro-Nazi sympathies because of her father’s military past (see Foster, “Annemarie Heinrich”). Giselle Freund (1908–2000) spent relatively little time in Argentina (1939–45), but she created a solid niche for herself as the consequence of her own images of Eva Duarte de Perón, which she placed in a splashy spread in the famous North American photo magazine Life. All three of these women were so well connected with the development of European photography that their names constitute signposts in the enormous importance Argentine photography assumes in the mid and early decades of the twentieth century, when it became one of that country’s most significant categories of cultural production. Madalena Schwartz resided in Argentina between 1934 and 1960 before 99 establishing definitive residence in São Paulo, which is where she exclusively pursued her photographic career. Schwartz’s success was something of a phenomenon, for she began her photography in middle age and quite by happenstance, then went on to become the most famous photographic portraitist of her generation, leaving an archive of more than sixteen thousand images. Schwartz appears to have had a very firm understanding of one of the controlling principles of Brazilian society, which sees national social subjects as an enormous jumble of diversity including both the high and the low in every possible formulation of these basic terms, and as a result her work extends from political figures of the stature of Jânio Quadros and Lula to the world of transvestite performers, the latter images constituting one of the most recognized dimensions of her work. Although Schwartz apparently never concerned herself with Jewish community life as such, it is important to see her photography as highly significant and yet one more example of the enthusiasm with which a Jewish exile can unhesitatingly enter into the rhythm of his or her new society, going on to make impressive, original contributions to it. Twentieth-century Brazilian society may have had very conflicted opinions about the presence of Jews, but it would be difficult to construct a reasonable cultural history beginning with the 1922 Semana de Arte Moderna without reference to them, no matter how “Jewish ” or “non-Jewish” one might wish to characterize the texture, thematics, vision, and language of their contributions. Hildegard Rosenthal concerned herself with photographing the public spaces of São Paulo, capturing with admirable precision the transformation of what had been the center of the Brazilian coffee industry into the major financial center of Latin America. Her images represent urban development in general terms as well as the emergence of the fascistic interests of Getulio Vargas, such as the imposing Pacaembu Stadium. In the process of creating her extensive dossier of urban images, Rosenthal could not help but provide an account of the degree to which these São Paulo public spaces were unquestionably masculine in design and occupation. In this way, the critical eye of the foreign photographer engaged in a decidedly ironic commentary on how the increasingly categorical modernity of São Paulo still suffered from the sexist legacy of Lusitian feudalism. In contrast to Rosenthal’s interest in the urban cityscape, Schwartz opted for portrait photography. People, to be sure, appear in Rosenthal’s photographs , but they are part of the scenery of the great city that she was undertaking to represent. In general, Schwartz shows no specific interest in scenMadalena Schwartz: A Jewish Brazilian Photographer São Paulo: Perspectives on the City and Cultural Production 100 ery and landscapes, but rather focuses her eye on the human figure whose context serves fundamentally as an extension of the subject under study; for someone like Rosenthal, if there is an intervention of the individual, it is as a functional detail of...