Leaves

Trying to get in the last bit of green, or black & white, before all the leaves go brown. Buenos Aires, Argentina June 2009.

Typefacing

Looking for cool typefaces and letter design. Buenos Aires, 2009.

Meat Man

You really have to smell the chorizo to appreciate this scene. Imagine a hellish mob milling about a crumbling bus station, with wild dogs and wild children looking for scraps of meat and you start to get a feel for the mood that day. And then you pass by this man, grilling his sausage in a crowded corner, next to a crazy man hawking stolen cell phones and you just have to have one. You have to treat yourself to a delicious choripan, the signature street dish of Buenos Aires. Slater on some relish, hop on the sweaty subway and guard that heavenly hunk of meat from all of the jealous eyes you'll soon encounter. Enjoy.

Old Friend Big Up

This is another image that I have posted before, but I thought that if any photographs deserve the bigger treatment it is this one. You can almost hear this elephant scrounging for peanuts.

Close Up Mania

Two more photographs I have posted previously. I think they look much more dramatic at this scale, but they can't be seen without scrolling down. This might take away from the impact of the image if you have to scroll several times to see the whole thing. Even though I like the images this size, I might go back to the old style.

Branching Out

I'm back in the US now and I had been thinking about retiring the site, but I decided that I should keep it up as long as I have images to fill the space. So, I'll post as regularly as I can, with images from Providence, New York and New England. I also hope to be in England sometime this fall, so there will be images from there as well when I have them.

Best of Never Before Seen

I'm leaving Buenos Aires for good this weekend and I thought I would post a few best of shots that I hadn't shown on the site before. I don't think any of these images besides the flower explicitly reminds me of Buenos Aires and that is perhaps the point.

The city itself really could be anywhere in my mind. Having spent six months here, I have concluded that the urban area as a whole does not really have any outstanding or unique characteristics. That is not to say that the people or traditions of the city are not unique, only that the actual physical landscape leaves something to be desired.

Long called the 'Paris of South America', Buenos Aires truly seems like a city trying to join Europe and falling just short in the process. The beautiful buildings of Argentina's golden age smack of European elegance and lofty global aspirations, while the buildings of today's trendy neighborhoods are cookie-cutter and thoroughly uninteresting. I have often wondered where the homegrown style was, where the recognition of an inherent aesthetic came into its own and I haven't found a compelling answer.

Perhaps this is only natural in a country where the vast majority of the population traces its lineage to Europe. Perhaps this is natural in a city that has experienced massive waves of immigration and intermittent periods of ruinous financial speculation and collapse. Buenos Aires is undoubtedly a melting pot, but one that has not formed a dominant, coherent perspective of its own. After all, when you take the nickname as the closest approximation of a famous city on another continent, how can you develop your own style?

Best Graffiti

Of all of the things you could rail against or stand behind, this has to be the least likely to appear in graffiti. The ancien regime is making a comeback.

Gursky

If you are in Buenos Aires now or are coming down in the future, a necessary stop would certainly be the Fundacion PROA, a great gallery in La Boca. Set right on the old city port, PROA is a large converted warehouse, with soaring ceilings and massive windows, perfect for exhibiting an artist like Andreas Gursky. He's long been a favorite a mine and now I've found a favorite place to see his work.

Neighborhood Personalities

A few of the colorful characters you might see on a walk around our neighborhood. Its always good to see a new face brighten up a blighted wall.

Keeping A Theme

Two more storefronts, one from San Telmo and one from Villa Crespo. The first is a rather strangely named laundromat and the second is a rag tag shoe repair shop. Its really the lettering more than anything else that does it for me.

Storefront Return

Three different styles. The first image is rather typical of downtown Buenos Aires, where small, sparsely decorated cafes dominate.

The second image is of another ubiquitous site in this city, the kiosco. What the bodega is to the Bronx, the kiosco is to Buenos Aires.

And the final image is of yet another common city site. Hardware stores, as well as tire and paint shops abound, all helping to support the Argentine do-it-yourself attitude.

While all of these storefronts are of a common type, I think that these three have something special, whether they know it or not.

Brokedown Update

Two more views of some brokedown favorites.

Brokedown and No Way Home

These sort of scenes are incredibly prevalent both in our neighborhood and throughout Buenos Aires. Its not as though these cars are being work on, its as if they were originally set aside for that purpose but were forgotten. This seems to fit right in line with the Argentine reluctance to buy any kind of new automobile, though this sentiment only applies to the older generation. Just fix it up until the wheels fall off.

Two Views (La Boca)

Two views of the port of La Boca in Buenos Aires. The neighborhood is the long neglected former entry point of the city and feels a cross between a backwater port and an elegant shanty town. The stairway plunging into the fetid water seems a sort or analogy for the entire area. When the Europeans were streaming off the boat, this area was vibrant with multiculturalism and was a welcome sight after a long sea journey. Now it has been reduced to a second rate barrio in the city it helped create, where the history has been replaced by innumerable stalls selling Boca Juniors memorabilia.

Telltale Signs

This is a selection of photographs from my latest album, Telltale Signs. I am going to continue to shoot, but this might be the last full album for a while. This is my last month in Buenos Aires, and I'm going to be spending a good amount of time trying to photograph areas that I have yet to visit. Enjoy.

Signs of the Times

Been away for a bit because its a war of American and Italian stereotypes in the streets.

Searching For The Reason

I think I have been losing focus recently.  I know that this site was supposed to be about the way people move about the city, and the city being like a living organism, but I just can't fill the subject matter.  In a way, maybe I have been sticking to the theme, but it hasn't been all that clear sometimes.  However, I like the way things have been going.

And these three photos are exactly what I have been trying to produce as a theme.  Three different looks at Buenos Aires, though they could be anywhere really.  For me, these images are what the city really is, a picture of progression, of peripheral glances and of the mixture of organic and inorganic.  Those qualities are true and inherent of any urban environment and I have been looking for them in my photographs.

New Album Big Things

If you haven't gotten an email from me yet, I just put up a new photo album, New Doors, of all of the best portals and thresholds I've seen over the last four months.

And there is a story about these doors and what they mean to me on Argentina's Travel Guide, a thorough travel site. Click over and check it out, and let me know what you think.  This is my first published piece and any comments would be welcomed and greatly appreciated.  Enjoy.

Leafy Canopy

The leaves are really starting their final fall here and I thought I would post some of the best trees I've seen over the last nine months.  Enjoy the leafy green.