John Gordon and Professor Linda Sullivan, Fine Arts and Communication
The project Mi Buenos Aires Querido was a wonderful opportunity for me to begin my work on a professional level as a graphic designer and artist. The project explores cross cultural design as well as experiential communication and the marginalization of Latin America. I never intended to exhibit a photo essay, presenting glossy photos glamorizing Buenos Aires. Doing so would make people think the city is beautiful, and while it is the beauty is not superficial. I wanted to communicate the beauty and struggle of everyday life in the neighborhood of La Boca. La Boca was chosen because it once was the home of the ultra-wealthy and now the poor have inhabited the abandoned mansions. The dichotomy of life in the Boca embodies the struggle and beauty, present and lost of Buenos Aires.
Recently, photography has lost its power to communicate to me. We have been inundated by this medium, and much of it is all the same. We see magazines and television, showing us beautiful people, doing beautiful things in beautiful places; and we assume that everything photographed is beautiful like that. Even pictures of war, starvation, and sickness become precious artifacts to the viewers, treasured and revered for their magnificence. I don’t want to diminish the power of the work by presenting it as photography to be regarded as, or compared to a magazine advertisement. The struggle was to separate the photography from contemporary methods of looking at photography.
I present this work not only to look at, but also to feel. You do not have to think and interpret my pieces to understand them; just look at them and pay attention to what you feel. In my attempt to discourage a television culture reading of the photography I have selected portions of the photograph that felt the truest, the parts that will not influence you to lean on past experiences to interpret them. Mi Buenos Aires Querido arose out of my love for the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I want to show it to anyone that may not have the chance to see it in person. I have tried to show the city as I remember and love it, the bad and the good. I hope this emotion can be communicated through the dirt and grime, weathered houses and people all show one thing, the beauty of humanity as it trudges along the daily grind, living. This is not a documentary, but an emotional exploration; and for me, through my memory at least, it is true.
The Boca is a neighborhood in the now defunct port of Buenos Aires. Before the turn of the century, the Boca was flooded with poor Italian immigrants. They moved into deserted mansions that wealthy traders had abandoned when the once-prosperous port had closed. They called them conventillo’s: each family lived in a single room of the mansion, and shared the bathrooms and kitchens of the house. Italian culture spread through the neighborhood; changing the language, food, even rhythm, of the Boca. On a street called Caminito, the immigrants painted their houses with unused boat paint, and the bright colors began to intermingle on the buildings as the people painted with whatever colors they found. This street, with its endless variations of color, became a form of outward representation for life in the Boca: families grew, the neighborhood became even busier, a sensual but violent dance called the Tango was created, and crime–especially organized crime–soared. The Boca remains much the same even today. Through my experiences in the Boca, I had confirmed to me that it is wrong to think that people in other cultures are any different from us. Life is universal. Globally, though each neighborhood has a different history and different scenery, they all contain some form of violence and filth. However, they also house people living life like we do: working, sleeping, talking, playing, and eating with their friends and family.
There is something about this project that is special to me, something that cannot be put into words because it, too, is a feeling. I hope it communicates. I could not have completed this work without Blackbox, my brother and sister in-laws photography business helped with the expenses by donating equipment, time, experience and expertise to help me complete the project, my family, and my parents.
The work was presented in 2 ways. For a gallery exhibit in February I produced 2 installation sculptures, and a movie projected to the wall of the gallery. The majority of the work was produced after the exhibit as a book and poster series. The gallery show did not go as I had planned. I was not able to complete all of the work I wanted to for the February show. In April I was able to complete the work, and while I don’t feel like the project is finished I am pleased with the progress so far.