This dissertation is included in a master with both theoretical and practical concerns and intends to explore the meaning of silence as a theme for a photographic project. This project, named “Silere”, ended up on a photo-book, which contains images of Nature´s subjects. In this sense, the thesis is based, first of all, in the definition of silence. This concept assumed to be a very complex one, since it requires always the appeal of its opposite and cannot present any physical shape. The Latin etymological meaning of silence (which is based in two different words, related with two different kinds of silence: tacere and silere) is also presented here. The John Cage´s 4`33`` performance also assumes here its significant import because it is the most emblematic work of art that enables us to think about silence (and its impossibility) by using it as an ideological tool, that allows things to happen by themselves. However, since silence is mostly related to the realm of sound, it was necessary to redirect this research to the possibility of thinking silence in a photographic way. So, the main issue of this thesis is how the silence can be invoked in images and in the photographic act that goes with them. This issue gave place to the theorization of the idea of the “nature drawing her own picture”, used by the proto-photographers of the XIX century to define the projects that were being developed (which then were named “photography”). In these sense the silence in photography is in direct relation with the idea that “something happens by itself” in the process and in the act of photograph
