Mariano Brizzola

Severral of my photo-friends in Buenos Aires good me hooked on this Facebook group called Solo Analogas which is Spanish for “Film Only” (roughly speaking). Through the group, I recently discovered the work of Argentine Mariano Brizzola. Working with a 35mm camera, Brizzola’s pictures have a nostalgic feel. I’m not sure you could get away with this in the US anymore, but Argentina (and even more so, Uruguay) really still looks like this.

© Mariano Brizzola

© Mariano Brizzola

© Mariano Brizzola

© Mariano Brizzola

Brizzola’s website redirects to his flickr page, which somehow seems appropriate. He eschews the modern obsession of organizing his photos into “projects”. Each one is its own, delightful, thing. Also check out this interview (in Spanish) on the Uruguayan website AKA.

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