Landscape representation and environmental criticism: commentary on the album Picturesque Brazil by Charles Ribeyrolles and Victor Frond

Abstract

This article analyzes the landscape representation and the environmental criticism present at the album-book Picturesque Brazil, edited in 1861. The publication had its editorial project signed by Victor Frond, text by Charles Ribeyrolles and lithographs, produced from photographs, also by Frond. Picturesque Brazil was the first travel narrative to be published in the country containing illustrations obtained from photographs. Its authors aligned themselves to an intellectual tendency related to a 19th century environmentalist body of ideas, which defended the end of slavery as a necessary step for the establishment of a non-destructive relationship with Brazilian natural space. Criticism to nature destruction was also present in the works of other traveler artists, painters and photographers in 19th century Brazil.