BA Photo 2009 – Stuff I liked

On Thursday afternoon I went to Palais de Glace to check out the annual photography show. Buenos Aires Photo brings together about 30 art galleries that specialize in photography. Most are local altho there was a scattering from Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Spain. Like all art shows, it’s a little overwhelming to take in. Here’s a few photos that I liked:

Ezequiel Suranyi is an Argentine based in the UK. Most of his work is based around soccer. He had a few black and white images that had a real joy and charm to them.

Impressive images of Peru’s Carretera Sur by Hans Stoll.

From Laura Glusman’s series of plants. This is a very commonly used plant in apartment building lobbies here in Buenos Aires and I’ve been kind of fascinated with plans here recently so I enjoyed seeing the work of another photographer with a similar obsession.

Charlie Mainardi is a well known advertising photographer in Buenos Aires who was at the fair with an eponymous gallery showing his artistic works. The style is very much consistent with the advertising “look”. It’s not a look I’m too enthusiastic about but I enjoyed the content, photos of run-down Buenos Aires.

Mercedes Soledad Manrique’s photo was one of the selections in the Petrobras contest. This is a detail of the photo which shows two old women in a warmly lit interior. She doesn’t seem to have a website but I found this post on Guillermo Ueno’s blog Tosto.

Another selection from the Petrobras contest is this photo by Sebastian Friedman showing wealthy and upper middle class Argentine families with their domestic servants. The idea strikes me as a little too obvious but this photo is a joy to look at. I especially love the dad’s wry smile as his mother-in-law [I wonder?] lies on her death bed.

Puerto Rican photographer Tristan Reyes from his series Domingueando en La Perla.

Editing for my website

I had a bunch of 20x25cm prints made, mostly of my medium format stuff, mostly pictures of Buenos Aires, mostly houses. I’ve been playing around with the prints in my apartment trying to figure out an edition and sequencing for my eventual website. I’d like for my website to be just a single page; one long, horizontal scroll of .jpgs, maybe 15-20 images. I like the horizontal scroll format and the simplicity [as well as challenge] of summing up my work [as it stands now] on a single page. No Flash, no slideshows, no navigation.

I took the images to one of my classes, Edición Fotográfica at Centro Cultural Rojas. I figured it would be a good forum to get some feedback. Here’s the resulting mess of the same prints:

It was fantastic to see the connections the professor and other students made between separate photos and gave me a lot of ideas about alternative sequencing. The professor did say two things that stuck in my mind, rather ambiguous advice. First is that he hates series. Second is that my work is series driven and I should separate it thusly. Hmmmm… I’ll have to think about that.

Buenos Aires Photo – Oct 28-Nov 1, 2009

Palais de Glace

This weekend from October 28 to November 1st is Buenos Aires Photo, the annual art photography fair. Like art fairs in general, it can be overwhelming but it’s also wonderful to see so much work brought together. I always discover a lot of great photographers. It’s at Palais de Glace which is located at Posadas 1725. Admission is 20 pesos. More info on the website.

Alessandra Sanguinetti at Ruth Benzacar Gallery

© Alessandra Sanguinetti

I first became acquainted with the beautiful works of Alessandra Sanguinetti back in 2003 when the Yossi Milo gallery in New York showed her work The Adventure of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams. The series depicts two young girls, cousins, who live on a farm in the pampas [near Luján, I'm told] and who act out their childhood fantasies dressing up and posing. Ten years have since passed and Sanguinetti has returned to the farm to photograph again the girls, now young adults. The series is called The Life to Come or, in Spanish, El Devenir de Sus Dias. It’s currently on view until November 13, 2009 at the Ruth Benzacar gallery on Florida 1000.

Alejandro Lipszyc – Los Clubes

© Alejandro Lipszyc

If you’re in Buenos Aires, head on over to Teatro San Martin’s FotoGalería. Currently showing is Alejandro Lipszyc´s series Los Clubes. Shot with natural light and simple compositions, the photos show interiors of sports clubs in and around Buenos Aires. These clubs, while not the institution they once were, remain an important part of the city´s social landscape.

Go see the exhibit in person. The prints are really stunning. The FotoGalería is located in the ground floor, in the back, on the right, a little hidden away. Teatro San Martin is on Avenida Corrientes 1530 and the gallery is open from 2pm onwards daily (from noon on weekends). The show is up until November 29, 2009.

First Post

I never know what to write for the first post. I mean, it’s the first post! I guess I can start with some of the things that matter to me most:

My boyfriend Vagner, the love of my life and the reason I moved to Buenos Aires. He’s from Brazil. We met in 2005 and moved here together in March of 2008. Argentina is like neutral territory for us. Unless and until the US federal government recognizes gay marriage I’ll likely be living in semi-exile somewhere in Latin America. All things considered, Buenos Aires isn’t a bad place to call home.

Of course, this isn’t really my first post, that would be on some long-lost blog I started in the year 2000. It was hosted on Geocities and run thru Blogger, before they were even bought by Google. I was living in Buenos Aires at the time, just like I am know, and feeling isolated from my home. I discovered blogs in late 1999 and they totally changed my web experience in ways that have since become obvious and practically universal.

In 2003 I got my first digital camera, a Sony Cybershot U and registered my name as a domain. Here’s the first picture I uploaded. It’s a music store in Jackson Heights. I was living in New York at the time.

Last year I started a blog called BuenosAiresPhotographer.com. Here’s the first photo I posted on it:

I had tons of digital snapshots of Buenos Aires and I wanted a home on the web for them. I was playing around with ideas for domain names and was inspired by two sites, Mountain Photographer and Travel Photographer. The generic nature of their names seemed perfect for the Google Age and I discovered that no one had claimed Buenos Aires Photographer. Looking back the name is absurdly pretentious [me? THE photographer for Bs As, a city of 13 million?] and too vague for marketing myself in any specific way. Still, I’ve met people, discovered many hidden corners of the city from people’s suggestions and even sold a few images. At the same time I recognize that it’s not my main goal photographically, so I try to not let it eat up my life [and Vagner's very happy for that!].

Now I’m starting a WordPress blog. I’m doing this because I’ve decided I want ThomasLockeHobbs.com to show a limited portfolio of my best work. If you google me, it’s the first thing I want you to see. The old blog’s posts aren’t going anywhere. I created a page for the old blog’s archive, so you can access them.

I like personal blogging and want to continue with it. My goals for this blog are modest and unoriginal; occasional updates on what I’m doing, some reflections on living in Argentina, links to good photography here in Argentina, or in Latin America or in the rest of the world [but probably not so much].

So, add me to your reader or check back here ever couple of weeks or once a month to see what’s up.

Cheers!
Thomas