Dani’s Blog

Mariana and Fabian getting ready to mount Yuyo's canvas in his studio in Central Park, Barracas, Buenos Aires.

I’m feeling nostalgic tonight.
It’s almost midnight in Buenos Aires.
I’m in Paris.

My cheeks are still chilled from the walk home along the frigid Canal St Martin.

It’s hot and muggy down in BA and there will probably soon be a downpour.

One year ago today I watched a huge canvas being put onto an 11-by-3 meter frame in a studio in my neighborhood in Barracas, BA. Yuyo (Luis Felipe Noe) would soon start assembling his work for the Venice Biennale, a process I would continue photographing for three months in Argentina, plus another two weeks in Venice.

Today was day one.

Just back in Paris from the Venice Bienale.

A photo from this project documenting Yuyo Noé’s creative process was published in La Nacion in Buenos Aires on Sunday.

Noe working at Central Park, in Barracas, Buenos Aires. March 2009.

1 de Mayo is being honored a day early in Buenos Aires, today, the 30th of April. There has been virtually non-stop drumming on and near Avenida 9 de Julio since 11 this morning. It’s 7pm now. I went out to look around, through crowds composed of about 93% men. When finding my way through dense herds of them, I feel like some kind of passively hunted animal they often prefer to call bébé. Anyway. I love percussion and a good manifestation, and the day was perfect for it.

These are my last few days in Buenos Aires before I head north on a big bus. Jungle…to desert…to salt flats…and, perhaps…to Chile.

4pm light at Central Park, Barracas, Buenos Aires.

I am spending part of every day at Central Park, the studio and office complex in Barracas, photographing the painter Luis Felipe Noé (known as Yuyo, and sometimes Master) and his dedicated assistants as they work intensely on his works of art for the Venice Biennale. Time is running short. It all gets packed up in about a week and will be re-constructed on the other side of the ocean, where I will see it again at the end of May.

Tools

For two months I’ve watched him create; using brush, pen, finger, pencil, mop, ink, glue, paper, canvas and paint. He is Master to many and I’ve relished watching him work. He and everyone around him have been so warm, welcoming and helpful; the heart of my first experience of Buenos Aires.

Spending time with him and the artists who assist him has expanded my field of vision. My dreams are saturated with color and my reality is full of new ideas.

On Friday I climbed a water tower on the 25th floor and stood in the wind, shaking just a little, looking down at Buenos Aires.  A 360-degree view and nothing to hold onto.  It felt like surfing the world.  I crawled to the edge and laid down on my stomach to take some photos.

Perched above BsAs

The water tower is on top of my friends‘ flat in Congreso, where I was invited to dinner, which led to my first all-night poker game.  I was SO close to winning, and then . . . didn’t. Anyway. They claim to have the best view in Buenos Aires, they may be right.

Here is Congresso from their flat and mine.

Congreso, near and far

I moved this week. I wanted to see the city from a little higher up.

Sitting up in my bed on the 14th floor, I can look out on the autopista 25 de mayo and it feels like the building is in its path. Lying down I see the sky and think of Georgia O’Keefe being drawn to New Mexico.

Looking out on autopista 25 de mayo

But on the ground…
on the ground in Buenos Aires is another experience.

You navigate the potholes and loose sidewalk tiles concealing muddy pools of water that splash your feet.

You hold your breath crossing the street in the billowing black cloud left behind by the bus.

You keep your bag close and look over your shoulder.

You don’t hear your cell phone ringing above all the noise.

You duck into a kiosco searching for something that costs one peso so you can get enough change in this short-of-change city to get on the bus.

You keep walking because at the kiosco “no hay moneda.”

You smile naively at the bank and get 10 pesos worth of coins instead of the allotted 5.

You hear a honk or a “tsst tsst,” grit your teeth and get used to it.

You step into the middle of the street to get the bus driver to stop, then jump off at your destination as he slows down just enough.

Then aaaahh, you hear the ubiquitous bandoneon coming from the music store door,

While the regulars on the corner work on going through today’s garbage.

You stop at your favorite café with its black-and-white tiled floor to get a café con leche and buttery medialunas.

You say Hola to all of your neighbors, who recognize you on the second meeting.

You get lifted up to piso 14 and lie down and look at the sky.

Setting west over the autopista

For the last few weeks I’ve been photographing the creation of a piece of artwork for the Venice Biennale, which I will follow over to Italy at the end of May. The work is being created in a studio in Central Park, a huge puzzle of studios in Barracas, Buenos Aires.

The building takes up one whole block, between Avenidas, California, Iriarte, Vieytes and Herrera. Built in 1889, it was originally a match and matchbox factory until 1928, when it became a printing and graphics company, continually expanding its space until it went bankrupt in 1993.

Since the rehab and re-opening in 1998 its 50,000 m2 of space has been offices and artist studios… The painter Pérez Celis painted the exterior of the building and had a studio here.

I live two blocks away. It is my landmark to know when to get off the bus.

My Lumix was stolen on Saturday. It was my new note-taking device. The last photo I took with it was of mushrooms growing through the sidewalk. I should have taken them as a warning not to go further.

Fungus grows under these stones, go back!

The lesson: when someone says “that is hot, do not touch it,” believe them. Even if someone tells you, “well, if you take this street you can walk there alone,” remember this: the heat will still be there and you might not feel it until it’s too late, when you’ve already been spotted.

I was in La Boca. I’ll save the details because my parents will just worry.

This photo is from one week before, when I was walking with friends.

And this is the view from the clean and pretty Proa gallery, looking in the direction of where I was robbed. See those tall buildings on the right?  Do not walk on the other side of them alone. Get on the damn bus.

From the upstairs balcony.

I went up to the Centro Cultural Recoleta on Monday to see an expo of a photographer named Res.  The place was closed for fumigation, eek.  Will try again today.  Walking back, I stopped in the cemetery…

Tomorrow it will be two weeks that I have been in BsAs and I’m averaging one tango class a week. It’s not why I came here, only inevitable. I’ve met many who came for the tango and try to master it every single night. The challenge interests me, particularly when it involves creating something beautiful, which tango tragically is, but my patience can only handle a couple of classes a week.

But I’m not here to write about tango. It simply seeps in.

Madagascar jasmin. Looking out from Parque Lezama after a torrential downpour. Barracas.

Why did I come to Buenos Aires?

That’s what people keep asking, so it seems a good place to begin. I can be vague and say a number of factors and people entered my life a while back that, when all put together led me to a city in South America I hadn’t considered living in before. But I also needed to get out of Paris for a while, find new subjects, add some new colors to my palette and open up my senses to the Spanish-speaking world. And in Paris, Argentina was in the air everywhere I turned. Si si, c’est vrai.

Church squeezed and shadowed. Tiles in San Telmo.

So I’m here.

The shock of the first week is over.

I’m eating empanadas daily. It’s like the crepe, ubiquitous and cheap.

Practically everyone I meet is an artist and a good one.

I’m living in a semi-industrial and economically-challenged neighborhood. It’s relatively safe, but you have to be very careful at night. While it’s at the southern edge of the city, where I might expect a sort of peace, it is the noisiest place I have ever lived.

El sol, direct and indirect

From the red-tiled garden, under sun filtered by grape vines, I hear :

The elevated train passing every two minutes, which I no longer mistake for a coming thunderstorm.

The man who drives his pick-up truck up and down the block with a grainy megaphone announcing “naranjas, uno kilo cinco pesos!”

A faceless person who blows a rhythmic whistle every morning, bright and early. Why?

The occasional low-flying helicopter.

Heavy trucks and buses bouncing regularly and violently on the broken pavement, making enough noise to put a pause into a conversation.

And… the occasional mini neighborhood batucada on the corner. Oh, but that is always welcome.

Arriving in Buenos Aires from Paris is like going from noir et blanc to Technicolor, in sound and sight.

Architecture and the watcher of the bridge in Puerto Madero.

PS. As I write, I have been bitten at least 4 times by mosquitoes despite the OFF! I’m slathered in, the next-door poodle is barking at the dalmation that hangs out all day in his barred window and Vicentico is singing to a fast rhythm on the radio.

Oh, and a sculptor friend in Paris wrote to say, “I hope you know what you’re doing. Times are difficult. I have no money to make sculptures so I’m taking photos.” Ahem, my response was more aggressive than I usually am, and is a blog entry for another day.