Photography: the potential of image as illustration tool in children's literature books

Abstract

From the conception of photographic art as a visual text, which narrates, informs and promotes interactions, this article aims to reflect on the potential of photography as an illustrative tool. Thus, it is understood that a literary work illustrated from photographic images allows the expansion of interpretative and dialogical limits between the reader and the work. Adele Enersen's work When my baby dreams was chosen for the investigation, a narrative composed of scenarios created manually using homemade artifacts and captured through the photographic record. Under a qualitative approach, the bibliographic research methodology was chosen, which took place through an interpretative analysis that allowed us to observe the means and instruments used in the composition of the work. As a theoretical basis, it relies on the studies of Santaella (2012), Flusser (2000) and Manguel (2001) on materiality, photography and literature as well as other authors that contemplate the themes. In this perspective, we seek to expand the principles of photographic materiality and identify the potential of its use as a literary illustration. It is concluded that storytelling combined with photographic illustrations contributes significantly to the reading comprehension and involvement of the reader, highlighting the materiality of the photographic image as an important characteristic of the literary illustration technique.