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The present article results from an attempt to approach and reflect on some concepts of the thought of Levinas, Butler and Barthes for a political view of images, especially those that expose faces and bodies victimized by violence. To do so, we focus on an ethical perspective of portraiture, considering the political power that revisits the suffering of the victims of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship may spur us on. The documentary film Retratos de identificacao provides us with two mugshots of the faces of Chael Charles Schreier and Maria Auxiliadora Lara Barcelos, the Dora, two young victims of that exceptional regime. In electing these two photographic records, we exposed them to the reflection developed by the said philosophers, so that we could understand the political and ethical dimensions of the images of these two violated but inescapable faces.

Retratos de identificação (2014) oferece, a partir de sua montagem arquivista e cinematográfica, uma nova legibilidade histórica para as imagens realizadas pela ditadura militar brasileira – no caso, os mugshots (as famosas “fotos de prisioneiro”) e as imagens capturadas de maneira clandestina pelos militares para acusar os então “inimigos” do regime. Alçadas ao tempo, tornadas arquivos, estas imagens comprovam a profunda violência e perversão perpetradas pelos órgãos militares a partir de 1964. Assim, o artigo sondará o gesto de sobrevivência das imagens-arquivo que, elevadas ao tempo, tornaramse inscrições históricas e comprobatórias dos crimes cometidos pelo regime militar brasileiro.