Socio-historical study aiming to examine the graduation of Nursing schools regarding its meaning and the emblems as an effect to fix the image of schools and the nursing profession to society. The analysis of the documentary Corpus was made from the context of photographs, based on written documents. The study showed that the graduation rites were one of the ways to publish the image of the nurse at that time and the objects representations were flagship brands in the production of symbolic beliefs. Thus, it is possible to finally consider that the institutional rites and objects representations used by the Practical School of Nurses of the Brazilian Red Cross and the School of Nurses of the National Department of Public Health were strategies to proclaim the Identity of the profession in their own ways.
Nursing; History of nursing; Ritualistic behavior
