Milena Bonilla – Transitory Map

The last post on Bruno Dubner reminded me of work I saw by Colombian artist Milena Bonilla. I first discovered her work about a year ago when, upon arriving in Bogotá, I googled “contemporary columbian photography” and found her name on a list of people exhibited at a show in England a few years ago.

Milena Bonilla - Transitory Map

I liked this work called Transitory Map and she describes it thus on her site:

The project consists in to take randomly several buses in Bogotá city and to sew the holes that appeared on the damaged seats. (seats are made of foam and synthetic leather or fabric). The size of the hole defines the time used to travel along the city sewing the damaged seat. After finishing the tour, the path taken is transferred to a map, using as a convention the same thread color as the one used to sew the seat. During the whole project twenty five tours were made from which there are sixteen documented.

I’m really taken with the simple beauty of the photos; their color scheme and soft lighting. The gesture, too, is symbolic of healing and alludes to the country’s violent past (and present).

Milena Bonilla - Transitory Map

Milena Bonilla - Transitory Map

2011 in Review

I spent a lot of 2011 traveling, being a bit of a vagabond in different places.

During January, February and half of March I was in Colombia. I discovered fantastic artists and took a ton of pictures, none of which have been properly scanned. The negatives have been sitting with a friend in New York since late March. Eventually, I’ll get to them.

3 guys in Bosa, Bogotá, February 2011

After Colombia, I went to the Peruvian Amazonian city of Iquitos. I spent just over a month there photographing people and places. I’m pretty happy with the work I did so far there and, in fact, I’m planning on going back there in just a few weeks. I’ve been sitting on the photos because I’m not sure what direction the work will ultimately take. Here’s a few pictures that I’ve uploaded to flickr so far:

Iquitos, Peru

Iquitos, Peru

Diego in Iquitos, Peru

I returned to Buenos Aires in late May, mostly to finish my Ochava Solstice project. I was a lot more methodical this year (see post), and set myself a goal of 50 street corners for the whole series.

Preparing to photograph a corner for my Ochava Solstice project

In the end I think I got about 60-something corners, which I then edited down to 49. I even published a little dummy book on blurb, which is really cool to have and to hold.

Ochava Solstice dummy book

Meanwhile I continued to work on another series, Riverbank | Barranca, which I started in 2010 and published on my site this year. It was just featured on the blog, New Landscape Photography.

Riverbank | Barranca

I also continued to add slowly to my collection of Chalets and Contrafrente views.

Since last year I’ve been thinking about pursuing an MFA. While the classes and workshops I have been doing in Argentina have been great, I’ve been feeling that I’d be well-served by spending a couple of years of intense study in North America. To that end, I was just on a six week road trip in the US visiting schools. I covered 8000 miles in just under a month, driving from LA to Boston and back again. I’d like to say it was epic but traveling in the US is kinda easy. There were days when I woke up at dawn and drove for 12 or 13 hours straight, subsisting on junk food, podcasts and 5-hour energy drinks. Those days were my favorites.

West Texas

I’m super-excited about 2012; the travels that I have coming up and the mystery about where I will end-up come August.

Colombia 2011, very rough scans

I was in Colombia for all of January, February and the first half of March. There’s no lab anywhere in the country that will process large format film. I had to take it all with me to New York. Thankfully none of it was damaged by the x-ray scanners at the airport. Here are a few pictures from my time there:

Cellphone minute vendors in main square of Villavicencio

This was the first time I’ve ever done street portraits of strangers with my 8×10 camera. Asking strangers for photos with such a large and strange-looking camera is not hard at all. I found the hard part to be dealing with all the attention the camera drew. That, and trying to figure out how to direct people in the photo once they said yes. I ended up taking a lot of pictures of people standing exactly in the middle of the frame, looking at the lens. Not that it’s a bad look, necessarily.

Osiris in Bosa, Bogota

Often people just came up to me and asked to have their picture taken. I only had 3 film holders which meant I could only take 6 photos in any given outing. I had to say no a lot. In the photo below, this man came up to me and said he was the oldest gay in the square and that I should take his picture. I couldn’t say no to that. It was my last photo too.

The oldest gay in the square, Villavicencio

Taking pictures of strangers on the street without a clear idea of why or what for is a great way to burn through a lot of film and money, especially with an 8×10 camera where each picture costs about $20 [don't blink!].

With my 4×5 camera I went to a lot of different neighborhoods and surrounding cities and mostly took of pictures of houses and small buildings. Bogota and its surrounding cities have a very interesting aesthetic. I think it has something to do with being at 8,000 feet in elevation and having it never be too hot or too cold. Let’s call it Goldilocks architecture. It’s all the stuff you can build if you never need central heat or air.

Abandoned House in Tunja

While I was out shooting, residents in the neighborhoods usually thought I was a city employee, assessing property values or something. People would come up to me and complain about potholes or broken lamp posts.

"Mini" Skyscraper in Puente Aranda, Bogota

Just being out and about I’d come across some interesting situations which I just had to photograph.

Golf "criollo" in La Calera

You’re probably wondering why these scans are so atrocious. They’re not actually scans. Contact sheets are really expensive in the US, so everything was just process only. All I had time for was to take a quick snapshot of the negative sitting on the light table at the lab with a digital point and shoot, which I then inverted in Photoshop. I wish I had access to a color dark room and/or a good scanner. Alas, I’m headed back to South America and I’ll be leaving these negatives with a friend here in New York for safekeeping. Someday I’ll have to do right by these pictures.

Juan Fernando Herrán – Campo Santo

Juan Fernando Herrán is a sculptor who occasionally does projects involving photography. Campo Santo is a body of work documenting an area of simple crosses. The crosses are hidden in a patch of forest and are made with simple materials found on site. They are made as a remembrance of area residents killed in Colombia’s violence. Making a cross out of two sticks is a very simple but also very powerful sculptural gesture.

Juan Fernando Herrán - Campo Santo

Juan Fernando Herrán - Campo Santo

Maria Isabel Rueda – Reves

Right when I first got to Colombia, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to write about on this blog. Googling the term “Colombia Contemporary Photography” turned up this exhibit in the UK from which I then discovered the work of artist, illustrator and photographer Maria Isabel Rueda.

© Maria Isabel Rueda

© Maria Isabel Rueda

© Maria Isabel Rueda

These portraits are all titled ‘Reves’ although there is no additional text to the series. Rueda has other portrait series which are more straightforward in their categorization of their subjects; goths, beach goers, tourists covered in mud [it's a Colombia thing]. I liked these portraits the best however. I’d recommend taking a tour through Rueda’s flickr stream as it contains a rich and varied sample of her many projects.

Karen Biswell – Portraits

While visiting the gallery Valenzuela Klenner, I liked a few photographs by Karen Biswell.  Later, looking at her site, I really, really liked her portraits.

© Karen Biswell

© Karen Biswell

© Karen Biswell

I’m sorry to have missed her earlier show at the gallery, A Tres Bandas, which shows the house of her grandfather, once Colombia’s champion billiards player, along with archival photographs of the master at work:

© Karen Biswell - A Tres Bandas

© Karen Biswell - A Tres Bandas

Pablo Adarme – Cake Houses

Continuing with an overview of various artistic responses to the popular domestic architecture of Colombia, comes the delicious work of Pablo Adarme.

Casas Pastel by Pablo Adarme

Casas Pastel by Pablo Adarme

Casas Pastel by Pablo Adarme

Adarme first went around Venecia, a working class neighborhood in the southern part of Bogota, photographing houses. He then contracted a local baker to make cakes based on the design. In Spanish the word “pastel” can mean both the English word “pastel” as well as “cake,” so the title is a pun, based on the color of the houses.

This work was exhibited in the Venice Biennial of Bogota. Venecia = Venice, so it’s another pun, get it? According to the biennial’s official announcement, it was started in 1995 by Colombian artists frustrated at not being able to access international air fairs but has since morphed into an effort to bring art and artists to undeserved communities within Bogota.

Alvaro Herrera – Pintor de Puertas

Moving from window bars to doors, I happened upon Alvaro Herrera’s project Pintor de Puertas while Googling some art galleries in Bogota.

Alvaro Herrera - Pintor de Puertas

I actually kind of groaned when I first saw this image as it reminded me of those cheesy posters of “The Doors of [insert City Name].” Then I read about Herrera’s process and it struck me as interesting. He went around to different houses in a poor neighborhood, offered his services as a door painter in exchange for being able to photograph it and use it for this project. The design of the door was a collaboration between the artist and the inhabitants.

When I take a picture of someone, I don’t think I’m taking something from them, necessarily, but I do feel a little bit of guilt about appropriating their image for my own desires. I’m very aware that I’m dependent upon the kindness of strangers [or friends, or family] for the work that I do. Herrera’s project strikes me as a fitting exchange between photographer/painter and subject.

Luz Angela Lizarazo

Luz Angela Lizarazo is an artist active in painting, sculpture, drawing and photography. Among her many works are a series of works inspired by intricate designs of security bars found on most houses in Colombia.

Celosias 2 by Luz Angela Lizarazo

Celosias by Luz Angela Lizarazo

Luz Angela Lizarazo

Lizarazo also has a series of photographs, Antejardines, of the actual houses and their window bars.

From the series Antejardines © Luz Angela Lizarazo

From the series Antejardines © Luz Angela Lizarazo

From the series Antejardines © Luz Angela Lizarazo

I discovered Lizarazo’s work while visiting N-ce Arte, a non-profit gallery in Bogota. The show, now closed, featured very large murals, painted directly onto the gallery’s walls and meant to be temporary. Lizarazo painted two large murals in spray paint with stencils based on the designs of these window bars. Here’s a picture that I snapped of the mural during my visit:

Luz Angela Lizarazo at N-ce Arte

Be sure to visit Lizarazo’s website. It’s one of the best designed websites for an artist that I’ve come across.

Flickr Finds: Andre Dos Santos

Barrio La Castellana © Andre Dos Santos

Bus terminal in Tunja © Andre Dos Santos

Barrio La Castellana © Andre Dos Santos

I search for images a lot on flickr. Sometimes I’m scouting out locations, other times it’s simply a winograndian desire to see my world photographed. The images above are by Andre Dos Santos. I found them while doing a search on the terms “Bogota Medium Format” or perhaps it was “Bogota Formato Medio.” It’s not that I’m philosophically against digital [although my emotional biases skew towards the analogical], rather, it’s that there’s a whole lot of uninteresting crap on flickr. Delimiting the search by format and film type is a good proxy for finding photographers whose interests coincide with my own.

I liked Dos Santos’ images of the Bogota neighborhood of La Castellana. I’m basically interested in residential architecture anywhere and Bogota is no exception. The color palette, the design of the houses, the small details like the decorative window bars and other design flourishes are a source of endless fascination.