The photographic document: a social and communication object for the generation of knowledge

Abstract

The photographic document constitutes a huge challenge for what is called the Information Age and is aligned with the technological advance, namely the imposition of digital, through image capture devices. The treatment of photographic information, although at first glance, shows an immense range of opportunities and benefits, still suffers from a limited and underdeveloped study. If, on the one hand, textual documents are present, in an overwhelming majority, in the information centers and, for that reason, their analysis and
treatment are carried out daily, on the other, the image has been positioning, even though slowly, in the information society as a relentless medium in the generation of knowledge. The image is dominant in the communication, but the photograph still has a diverse treatment, as far as the description, interpretation and systematic use. The difficulty of searching in collections of images is well known and evident. Starting from a case study with image-producing researchers, it is intended to understand how photography can be a benefit,
understanding how it should be treated so that it becomes a resource of value, with significant effects on information retrieval . This study is based, above all, on the descriptive tasks necessary to give the context to the photographic document, since this is a fundamental activity for them to be interpretable and recoverable. The process of interacting with the researchers constitutes the fundamental methodological process of the work, since it allows to make the models of description of the image dynamic and flexible, allowing that it is not
limited to certain domains.