The article discusses the relationship between press photographs and the writing of contemporary history. Based upon the studies about history of the Brazilian memory, photojournalism, this work is methodologically oriented by oral history researches and the uses of photography in history. The central focus relied on the analysis of the Brazilian photographer Flávio Damm, and his first impact reportage, published at Revista do Globo, in 1948, about the return of Getulio Vargas to the political scene after the Estado Novo. From this case study the article analyses the relationship between words and images, and its contribution on the building of the so-called sources of memory; the impact of the media on the contemporary memory; and finally, the capacity of the photography image in narrating and building a historical writing, renewed by the uses of non-traditional sources - oral and visual.
narrative; memory; photography
