A CONCERNED AMERICA, PHOTOGRAPHS OF GENEVIEVE NAYLOR (1941-1942) AND SEBASTIÃO SALGADO (1980-1996) * . Ana Maria Mauad (Laboratory of Oral History and Image, Federal Fluminense University, Brazil) Abstract The study looks at photographic presentations of social experience, developed both in United States and in Brazil, in a photographic tradition that came to be known as “concerned photography.” A comparative approach to the work of Genevieve Naylor and Sebastião Salgado is developed to show the capacity of photographic language to develop a political discourse that affects public opinion, while also proposing a social imaginary of the photographers’ subjects. Naylor was a photographer hired by the State Department agency, the OCIAA, during the Good Neighbor Policy to photograph Brazil. She ignored the official protocols she was supposed to follow to produce a sensitive profile of the Brazilian hinterland that was shown in an exhibition that toured widely in the US. Salgado is a Brazilian photographer who has traveled around the Americas for more than ten years to produce a book and many exhibitions, including an on-line presentation, on the current state of American life. Both photographers produced a political discourse re-signifying the political and historical meaning of America by foregrounding its multiple identities. Key-words: photograph, social experience, Brazil, United States, visual narrative. During the twentieth century a visual culture centered on the uses of technical images has been developed by different kinds of media, specially movies and photographs. Both of them have been playing an important role on the building of contemporary imaginary connecting social experience with its multiples representations. The main purpose of this study is to characterize social experience as a subject matter for photographs, developed both in United States and in Brazil, in a photographic tradition named by concerned photographs. A comparative approach to the work of Genevieve Naylor and Sebastião Salgado is developed to show the capacity of photograph language to agency a political discourse that affects public opinion, but also create a social imagination about their subjects. Naylor was a photographer hired by the State Department agency – OCIAA, during the Good Neighbor Policy to photography Brazil. She overcame the official protocols and produced a sensitive profile of the Brazilian hinterland that was shown in a cross country exhibition, all around US. Salgado is a Brazilian photographer who traveled around different countries of the Americas, for more than ten years, and had produced a mosaic made by black and white pieces, which result was published in a book and in many exhibitions that had traveled around the world. Both of them had produced a political discourse appropriated by different audiences on the context of its * This study is developed during a research scholarship, titled: “Contemporary memories: narratives and images of Brazilian photojournalism in the XX th Century” sponsored by CNPq/Brazil.