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This is a short essay which I submitted along with a photo project I completed during a one month stay in Argentina last year, funded by the MacQuitty travel scholarship which I was awarded by Queen's University, Belfast. The work was exhibited in the Queen's Film Theatre on my return.
LO COTIDIANO
Christopher Patrick Fitzsimons
To understand a city it is not enough to stroll its streets. You must live in it, deal daily with its professionals, its shop-keepers, its millionaires
Alejo Carpentier[1]
I am interested in identity on a collective level as occurs within a nation or a city and how this influences and shapes how people identify themselves and how they are perceived by outsiders. I am also fascinated by the banality, rigidity and mundaneness of daily life, rituals and the necessities of existence. I was inspired to undertake this project as a result of my interest in the culture and identity of Argentina. Buenos Aires is perhaps the city in Latin America which exhibits the most “European” influences in terms of architecture, gastronomy and culture, this influence being most evident, or most interesting, in my opinion, in the mentality and temperament of the porteño people. The mixture of the cultures of Spain, Italy and France with South America indigenous influences has created a unique and intriguing culture and identity.
This project is personally important for me given that Buenos Aires is the place that I have spent most time in out of the UK and for me it is a place which feels familiar, comfortable and comforting. This affection is something which I wanted to bring out in my images. One of my main aims was to capture the tiny details which make this vast city so individual and which bring me back to it time and time again. I wanted to show the people and the city, not separate and detached from one another but people in their city, people in this city known for its street life, people living their lives on its streets.
This sort of walking is close to reading, to day dreaming or to meditation
Jason Wilson[2]
Christopher Patrick Fitzsimons
To understand a city it is not enough to stroll its streets. You must live in it, deal daily with its professionals, its shop-keepers, its millionaires
Alejo Carpentier[1]
I am interested in identity on a collective level as occurs within a nation or a city and how this influences and shapes how people identify themselves and how they are perceived by outsiders. I am also fascinated by the banality, rigidity and mundaneness of daily life, rituals and the necessities of existence. I was inspired to undertake this project as a result of my interest in the culture and identity of Argentina. Buenos Aires is perhaps the city in Latin America which exhibits the most “European” influences in terms of architecture, gastronomy and culture, this influence being most evident, or most interesting, in my opinion, in the mentality and temperament of the porteño people. The mixture of the cultures of Spain, Italy and France with South America indigenous influences has created a unique and intriguing culture and identity.
This project is personally important for me given that Buenos Aires is the place that I have spent most time in out of the UK and for me it is a place which feels familiar, comfortable and comforting. This affection is something which I wanted to bring out in my images. One of my main aims was to capture the tiny details which make this vast city so individual and which bring me back to it time and time again. I wanted to show the people and the city, not separate and detached from one another but people in their city, people in this city known for its street life, people living their lives on its streets.
This sort of walking is close to reading, to day dreaming or to meditation
Jason Wilson[2]
Buenos Aires is very much made for walking and people live their lives on the streets of the city in stark contrast to many other cities in the Americas which are, for various reasons, usually navigated by car. Although my perspective on the city is inevitably that of a foreigner on a fleeting visit, I feel attached to the city and the country due to my previous extended stays there and therefore felt comfortable photographing in many different areas. I do not feel like my nationality was a defining factor in creating this work nor do I truly acknowledge its impact or influence on the imagery. I feel that, as a result of travelling extensively I am de rooted in general; I feel no more or less foreign in Argentina than I do in Northern Ireland. This has, I believe aided me in undertaking this project.
Before travelling to Argentina I had watched a lot of films by various Argentine directors, one of my favourites being Pablo Trapero. His work, in common with many recent Argentine films explores daily life and existence in Buenos Aires. In particular I have been influenced by his films Nacido Y Criado(Born and Bred) and Familia Rodante (Travelling Family). In Argentina I visited various museums and galleries in order to update myself about the current artistic activities in the country and the region. I especially enjoyed visiting the Museum of Latin American Art and the Museum of Fine Art and purchased various photography books which gave me inspiration and ideas for my own work. After speaking to a young Argentine artist, Leandro Piñeiro, currently photographing in the city, whose book I had purchased, and an American photographer, Thomas Locke Hobbs, I had clear ideas as to the images I wanted to achieve in Buenos Aires. Leandro had published a series of books of black and white photographs of people going about their normal daily life, walking around the downtown centre of the city, unaware of his camera and his intentions, and this had achieved a sort of snapshot effect which captured perfectly the very unique character of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, or Porteños, as they are known. These images to me were very successful in creating portraits of people and by extension, of the city, which were powerful and interesting, both to the Porteño and to the foreigner. Thomas was creating a very different portrait of the city, based on its physical aspects and its architecture. Both of these artists were working in areas which greatly interest me and I decided to use their work as a catalyst for my own and to combine their two approaches. I wanted to capture everyday life, a recurring theme in Argentine art, particularly cinema, and the reality of the city and country, incorporating the architecture and character of the city into these portraits. In short I wanted to use Leandros approach and combine it with the work that Thomas was doing.
I have also been influenced by the photo essays of Jan Sochor which explore Latin American realities. Jan has been extremely successful in capturing the identity and character of the locations in which he has worked and I have taken from his work further inspiration and guidance on achieving a union between location imagery and portraits.
In taking the photographs I tried many different approaches ranging from staying static in one spot and photographing people as they passed me by to photographing from my waist and chest height without framing or focussing whilst walking. All of my approaches proved fruitful in different ways and achieved very distinct perspectives and effects. The images I have chosen to use are mostly but not exclusively those taken when I stayed static as I believe that it was not necessary to have blur in these images in order to convey the movement, activity and energy of the city. Perhaps the most important themes of the images are those of the intimacy and individuality of daily existence in a crowded city, the collective identity, hidden and foreign worlds and solitude and relationships.
The images I have submitted capture the entire social spectrum of people going about their daily activities; the cartoneros[3] or rubbish collectors who travel into the city from its outskirts every day, the business man on his way to a meeting, the child lost in his own world playing, the student listening to headphones, oblivious to the world around him and lost in his own thoughts, the man selling ice cream and sweets in the park on a sunny day, the woman protesting outside the British embassy on the anniversary of the Falklands war, the boy wandering along with his eyes closed and the schoolboy checking the time; all are fleeting daily moments in the lives of these people which I felt it was important to document and which, for me, capture, in some way, this city and its people. I intend for my prints to work as a sequence and to create a sensation in the viewer; an atmosphere, a feeling and a sense of location. I want the expressions of the people I have photographed to function as a link between the viewer and the subject; the viewer should look at the images and wonder about the expression or the lack thereof. Many of my photos were purposefully taken from behind the person, therefore hiding their face and their expression, but not their identity. I believe that these images challenge the viewer to imagine the persons face, their expression and their thoughts and to ponder their life; what were they doing there, who are they, what is their life like?
Like all great cities Buenos Aires doesn’t exist, except in the memory of those who live or lived there. It has no comprehensible form, no definable shape, it changes even as you walk through it, from corner to corner…. Perhaps there is too much of it, whatever it is: New York skyscrapers, Paris balconies, Madrid forged-iron windows, sidewalks from Damascus and Cairo, melancholy cafes and tree-lined suburban streets from places whose names are always on the tip of your tongue…. It is a city which foreshadows all others. You never leave it entirely, you keep rebuilding it through the faded snapshots your memory throws up
Before travelling to Argentina I had watched a lot of films by various Argentine directors, one of my favourites being Pablo Trapero. His work, in common with many recent Argentine films explores daily life and existence in Buenos Aires. In particular I have been influenced by his films Nacido Y Criado(Born and Bred) and Familia Rodante (Travelling Family). In Argentina I visited various museums and galleries in order to update myself about the current artistic activities in the country and the region. I especially enjoyed visiting the Museum of Latin American Art and the Museum of Fine Art and purchased various photography books which gave me inspiration and ideas for my own work. After speaking to a young Argentine artist, Leandro Piñeiro, currently photographing in the city, whose book I had purchased, and an American photographer, Thomas Locke Hobbs, I had clear ideas as to the images I wanted to achieve in Buenos Aires. Leandro had published a series of books of black and white photographs of people going about their normal daily life, walking around the downtown centre of the city, unaware of his camera and his intentions, and this had achieved a sort of snapshot effect which captured perfectly the very unique character of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires, or Porteños, as they are known. These images to me were very successful in creating portraits of people and by extension, of the city, which were powerful and interesting, both to the Porteño and to the foreigner. Thomas was creating a very different portrait of the city, based on its physical aspects and its architecture. Both of these artists were working in areas which greatly interest me and I decided to use their work as a catalyst for my own and to combine their two approaches. I wanted to capture everyday life, a recurring theme in Argentine art, particularly cinema, and the reality of the city and country, incorporating the architecture and character of the city into these portraits. In short I wanted to use Leandros approach and combine it with the work that Thomas was doing.
I have also been influenced by the photo essays of Jan Sochor which explore Latin American realities. Jan has been extremely successful in capturing the identity and character of the locations in which he has worked and I have taken from his work further inspiration and guidance on achieving a union between location imagery and portraits.
In taking the photographs I tried many different approaches ranging from staying static in one spot and photographing people as they passed me by to photographing from my waist and chest height without framing or focussing whilst walking. All of my approaches proved fruitful in different ways and achieved very distinct perspectives and effects. The images I have chosen to use are mostly but not exclusively those taken when I stayed static as I believe that it was not necessary to have blur in these images in order to convey the movement, activity and energy of the city. Perhaps the most important themes of the images are those of the intimacy and individuality of daily existence in a crowded city, the collective identity, hidden and foreign worlds and solitude and relationships.
The images I have submitted capture the entire social spectrum of people going about their daily activities; the cartoneros[3] or rubbish collectors who travel into the city from its outskirts every day, the business man on his way to a meeting, the child lost in his own world playing, the student listening to headphones, oblivious to the world around him and lost in his own thoughts, the man selling ice cream and sweets in the park on a sunny day, the woman protesting outside the British embassy on the anniversary of the Falklands war, the boy wandering along with his eyes closed and the schoolboy checking the time; all are fleeting daily moments in the lives of these people which I felt it was important to document and which, for me, capture, in some way, this city and its people. I intend for my prints to work as a sequence and to create a sensation in the viewer; an atmosphere, a feeling and a sense of location. I want the expressions of the people I have photographed to function as a link between the viewer and the subject; the viewer should look at the images and wonder about the expression or the lack thereof. Many of my photos were purposefully taken from behind the person, therefore hiding their face and their expression, but not their identity. I believe that these images challenge the viewer to imagine the persons face, their expression and their thoughts and to ponder their life; what were they doing there, who are they, what is their life like?
Like all great cities Buenos Aires doesn’t exist, except in the memory of those who live or lived there. It has no comprehensible form, no definable shape, it changes even as you walk through it, from corner to corner…. Perhaps there is too much of it, whatever it is: New York skyscrapers, Paris balconies, Madrid forged-iron windows, sidewalks from Damascus and Cairo, melancholy cafes and tree-lined suburban streets from places whose names are always on the tip of your tongue…. It is a city which foreshadows all others. You never leave it entirely, you keep rebuilding it through the faded snapshots your memory throws up
Wilson, Jason, Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination, 1999, Signal Books, Oxford
Jan Sochor:
http://www.jansochor.com
[1] Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination
[2] Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination
[3] http://www.cartonerosdoc.com/
[4] Foreword of Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination
http://www.jansochor.com
[1] Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination
[2] Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination
[3] http://www.cartonerosdoc.com/
[4] Foreword of Buenos Aires; A cultural and literary companion, Cities of the Imagination
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