la poesía – a story

do you remember the cafe la poesía, that magic night in san telmo? buenos aires devised our meeting, so romantic and sweet, lulú

horacio ferrer, lulú

i have blogged this image before but recently i submitted it to shutter sisters’ one word project through flickr and they published it on the blog the other day. i was quite chuffed as i admire all the images i see on their site and find them inspirational.

the word of the month for shutter sisters was ‘story’ and of course you can see why i thought it perfectly fit. my talented and lovely friend nicole wanted to hear more about it and thought i should blog the story.

la poesía was a cafe i went to daily when i spent a month in buenos aires. it was beautiful and atmospheric … and had great coffee and food. i knew that there was a story behind it and thought that it must be a story out of 19th-century buenos aires bohemia, but it was only when i got home and researched it that i did find out that story at wander argentina.

it is a 19th-century building although the cafe la poesía (the poem) was only established in 1982 – but it was a bohemian enclave of musicians and poets at the time. it closed only six years later but lived on in the hearts of those who inhabited it. as the wander argentina page says:

it was here that the uruguayan poet and lyricist, horacio ferrer, mostly known for his work with astor piazolla, met the woman who remains his wife to this day, lucía micheli. The meeting is immortalized in his 1992 song, lulú

the cafe reopened in 2008 – only one year before i visited! being there i could have sworn that it had been open and trading for 100 years. this place was steeped in the history and atmosphere of 19th-century bohemia even though it did not exist as a cafe at that time.

cleaning up

just a random post pondering spam and an excuse to look through & post some old images.

 

i seem to be getting a lot more spam comments these days. is this actually a good thing? does it mean i’m getting more traffic or something (i don’t think i’m getting that much more). since my spam filter’s pretty good, not that much seems to get through … but i just wonder why it is now.

 

i hope you like these images from la paz from my trip a couple of years ago. it was such a great city to shoot. in fact i’d prepared a whole bunch of black & white film photos, which i also shot there, ready for your viewing pleasure. i was about to hit publish when i realised i really hated the scan quality. time to rescan!

 

so instead, here’s some digital colour ones. i so rarely post digital and looking back at these i just love the way that my dslr picks up the colours, light and shadows of la paz. such a contrasty light up there in the rarified atmosphere of high altitude. there are lots of pics … but i took lots more originally … now i was only going to choose a few … but i couldn’t decide so here they all are …

 

la paz from lowest to highest points of the city spans from 3000 to 4000+ m in altitude! it was such an amazing place to photograph. many of my digital shots reflect the film ones i did in the same city. i can’t remember whether i shot them on the same or different days however. but i promise that i’ll post the film images too, once i rescan them …

 

for those curious about the llama foetuses

colonia: las ventanas (y las puertas)

looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. there is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. what one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. in that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
(charles baudelaire)

i noticed recently when looking through my photos that there were some recurring subjects that i’d unconsciously been collecting wherever i go. windows & doors are one theme that seems to feature prominently. like baudelaire, i find closed windows intriguing & mysterious – they make me want to peek in & see what’s going on inside. i wonder how they’re furnished, who lives there, what is the garden like, have the owners put their blood, sweat & tears into it or are they just renters, what spirit of the inhabitants & their daily lives are imprinted on the building itself. but the open windows definitely arouse my interest as well – many offer just a tantalising glimpse of inside; others are thrown wide open to allow you to see almost the entire room or house. with some, the life of the house spills out into the public domain – the inhabitants chat & relax out the front, kids’ toys are in the yard, glorious gardens are planted in windowboxes & garden beds. these are some that i took in colonia in just two days!

what themes intrigue you and draw you back again and again?

colonia in colour

so i promised some more images from colonia, where i spent two days in colonia en route from buenos aires to the beachside town of punta del diablo. i had been in buenos aires for three weeks and, while my digital camera was being fixed there, thought i needed some sun, sand & surf – before heading to the chilly south – patagonia.

colonia was not exactly sun, sand & surf – more like rain, cobblestones & still sea. but it was lovely, despite the rain & the overcast days. i’d love to go back there sometime & shoot some more. i posted a few images from this town a couple of days ago, but a few more are definitely in order.

when i went through them i realised i’d taken almost two whole films in two days – i was clearly inspired! so the colour shots come to you in two parts to break it up! more coming your way in the next couple of days.

colonia

just  a monday post. a few b&w film images from colonia del sacramento in uruguay. enjoy! some colour ones tomorrow.

inhabited

just a quick little post for the weekend! i’ve showed you some of the colour film images that i took in south america, including several from buenos aires that i displayed in my feria exhibition at sonido! cafe. i loved the beautiful soft light and colours that my canon tx captured during my time there. but i also shot with black & white film while i was there. it’s interesting to reflect on the difference in feel between images produced with colour film and those made with black & white, on the same camera in the same area of buenos aires at around the same time in similar light. 

to me the colour shots seem whimsical and dreamlike with a vintage feel. in contrast the b&w shots are sharp and defined with a simplicity that that lends itself to particular types of urban scenes that i so love to shoot. the images that i shoot in b&w are often simpler in their composition than my colour shots; they usual emphasise the built environment and, although the people that inhabit that environment are present, they are almost incidental to the scene. of course the contrast between these people and the solid structures surrounding them only serve to highlight their humanity and perhaps their fragility.

sometimes this is deliberate but, more often, i think it’s actually an unconscious process when i’m shooting b&w. my composition changes to this more simple style, with architectural forms and lines often the driving force, starkly contrasting with the people in the images.

i hope you enjoy these images – all shot in buenos aires in 2009. for those of you in melbourne you can see these four particular images in real life at brunswick street gallery in the photography 11a group show, on until 3 february.

feria

hello! i am back. i have been wanting to post for a bit but have been so busy with hanging & preparing for upcoming exhibitions that i haven’t had time to breathe. another big thing that’s been happening, which has nothing to do with photography but is worth shouting about, is that i’ve also been editing my friend’s phd. this took up some time but was such a great experience to work on. not only because i’m a bit nerdy & really enjoy the editing process but it also because it’s a really fascinating topic & i was so glad to be able to help out & be trusted with such an important task. now she going to hand it in within the week. congrats kate!

so back to what this post is about mainly! my first solo exhibition has been up at chiquitica gallery at sonido! for three weeks now &  it closes next friday, 3 december. lots of people have seen it – even friends from sydney who have been down for a couple of days have popped in! i’ve received lots of great feedback and, although i haven’t sold anything (yet!) the whole thing has been fabulous. for me it’s more about getting the courage up to get my work out there and it’s motivated me to do several other shows coming up over the next few months, as well as plan for future projects. for those who are in melbs, i really hope you can get there, but for those who can’t or are interstate or overseas, here’s a peek at the images. before it closes, i’ll take some in situ shots & post them, but you can see already see some shots of the show on both the sonido! & my facebook pages. i’ll also write a little more about the subjects of the photos over the next few days.

i intended to hang six images but in the end didn’t hang the first one that you see below. they all fitted but, spatially, five looked better. i still wanted to include it here as it’s part of the series,  so I wanted to show you it as well. also in the exhibition is that lovely girl in the yellow dress that i showed you in my first post so many weeks ago. this is what i wrote in my artist’s statement for the show:

The images focus on the feria de st telmo, a vibrant street market that comes to life every sunday in st telmo, a bohemian inner city barrio of buenos aires, argentina. here both locals and visitors come together once a week, taking over the streets in a riot of colour and music. these images document a typical market day by observing some of the characters who are at the feria every week: antique dealers, musicians, stallholders, artists, dancers, restaurant staff and roving advertisers for the businesses surrounding the market. They are integral to the life of the feria and seem somehow to belong to these streets. the visitors to the feria, most of whom are tourists, are also essential participants. there for only a short few short hours, they usually leave never to return, except through the memories that they have captured in their photographs.

i shot these photos over a couple of weekends on a 1975 canon tx that i bought at an amazing antique camera shop, which is on one of the streets at the heart of the fair. it was an unplanned, enforced purchase &  it changed my photography forever … but that is another story for another day. meanwhile enjoy the results of that very fortunate occurrence …