Dinuba

Dinuba is a small city in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It’s about halfway between Fresno and Visalia and is home to just over 20,000 people. My mom was born and grew up there. My aunt has lived there here entire life and owns the town’s newspaper, the Dinuba Sentinel, having inherited it from my grandfather who in turn took over from his father. The paper turned 100 last year and I’ve come to Dinuba to spend some time in the town and document the paper with my camera.

There’s a lot that’s fascinating about this town. I intned to write about it and this project of mine but I’m not sure just yet what to say. In the meantime, if you’re interested, I’m uploading some snapshots to flickr in a set I created called Dinuba 2010. Here’s a quick sample of some photos so far.

My aunt Diane writing her weekly column in her dining room

Photographing the closet that contains the Sentinel archives

Oak Tree and Canal in the Tule Fog

I’ll be back in Buenos Aires on March 14th. I can’t say I’m sad to be missing the oppressive heat and humidity of summer there.  

Extra Scans

Renault 12 Station Wagon in Santos Lugares, copyright Thomas Locke Hobbs

I scanned about 100 photos for my website but only used about 30. I uploaded the rest to flickr. They were photos that for whatever reason didn’t fit into my portfolio. Still, I spent money to have them digitized and it felt like a waste just to leave them on my hard drive.

Buenos Aires Conurbano on Flickr

I’m an enthusiastic user of Flickr [and other social media]. I use it to scout locations, research destinations, and just in general be inspired by others’ work. Here’s a few photographs from the outskirts of Buenos Aires (ie. the Conurbano) that I’ve found recently in my browsing:

Aerial view of neighborhood in La Matanza, © Andres D'Elia

San Martin from set Conurbano 2008, © German Adrasti

© Flickr user +toli

For a region with a population of 10 million, there’s hardly any photographs of the conurbano. A search on Flickr reveals a less than 400 photos. I’m interested in the place precisely because no one thinks it worthy to photograph. Also worth checking out is the group sud-sub-urb which describes itself as latinamerican suburban aesthetic.

Eduardo Gil’s Start in Photography

I came into the world of photography by accident. When the military coup occurred in 1976, I was a trade union representative in a multinational and was immediately put on the government’s blacklist.  If I wanted to stay alive I had to quit my job.

Argentine photographer Eduardo Gil describing his start as a photographer, taken from an interview published in the first issue of Revista Nuestra Mirada, a new online magazine about photojournalism in Latin America. The entire first issue is dedicated to Buenos Aires and has some great articles on Horacio Coppola, Marcos Lopez, Adriana Lestido and lots more photo essays about life in Buenos Aires. The articles are both in English and Spanish. This magazine looks like a great new resource.

Carlos Federico Saéz

Portrait by Carlos Federico Saéz, Uruguayan painter, 1878-1901

I enjoy visiting national art museums in small countries because you discover artists who, just because they didn’t move to New York or Paris, remained obscure but nevertheless produced amazing work. One such discovery I made last month while spending the weekend in Montevideo. On display at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales were about a dozen mid-sized oil paintings by Carlos Federico Saéz. The works reminded me of John Singer Sargent or Thomas Eakins and struck me as photographic, concerned with lighting and gesture. Saéz died at the absurdly young age of 22, producing some 70 works on oil.

Portrait by Carlos Federico Sáez

Sandro, RIP

Roberto Sanchez, aka Sandro de America 1945-2010

My favorite Argentine, 1960s, romantic, sex bomb, singer, Sandro, passed away yesterday. If I’d been alive back then I would’ve been tossing my panties on the stage too.

Check out this song from 1968, Yo Te Amo: