My pictures of Rosario

Eight months ago (in November 2007) I had the good luck to sign up for a photography workshop organized by the Firma & Odilo Estévez Decorative Art Museum (I mentioned it in passing back then). The goal was twofold: to observe and discuss pictures of old-time downtown Rosario, and to do guided photo tours and take pictures of our own. Then you had the option of submitting pictures for selection, to be part of a joint exhibition. It was planned for April. It was delayed, of course, but the guys at the museum let us all know that they were working on it, and a few days ago I received an e-mail announcing that the exhibition will be held in August at the Center Municipal District Center (the name looks like a joke, but it's the District Center building for the Center District). My pictures are the ones above (click to enlarge).

That workshop and those pictures hold a special meaning to me. It's not just the first time somebody else selects some my pictures to be displayed somewhere. It's that, while on this workshop and while walking down those streets, I met Marisa and talked to her for the first time. Three of her own pictures will share the exhibition room with mine. And to think that we didn't know each other at all when we took them...

May Day and around

Like I said yesterday, May Day is like a Sunday over here, or it felt like that to me. So maybe it was appropriate for me to post pictures of churches! Of course, I only take pictures of churches from the outside, or else get inside only to snap a few shots.

Labour Day being like Sunday, it was only logical that it and the days before felt like weekend. I don't really have an entertainment schedule on weekdays, because I have to wake up very early to get to work in time, so I can't have a late dinner or stay up after, say, midnight. And I need siesta — a nap, sometimes an hour, an hour and a half, to fill in my daily 8-hour sleep quota.

Last Tuesday, however, I left the office and, feeling that going home would be a waste of a precious sunny afternoon, I went downtown to the Centre Català to visit a model ship exhibition (it was the last day). The lady in charge told me that I had to come after 5 PM. It was 1:30, so I crossed it off. In the meantime, though, I'd passed by a library and bought a book about the evolution of human food habits by Juan Luis Arsuaga, short, at a discounted price. Interesting reading, not dense at all. I have another one of Arsuaga's books, El collar del neandertal, a longer study of the Neandertals he and others studied in Atapuerca, a massive fossil reservoir in Spain. He writes simply, for the general public, yet showing no signs of struggling to popularize (or dumb down) the technical subjects.

After that I proceeded to the local seat of the government of Santa Fe, a massive building that takes up a whole block. In the past it served as a jail, as the police headquarters, and as an illegal detention center during the last dictatorship. Then the government took most of it, a part was set aside as a memorial museum, another section was turned into municipal offices, another one was turned into the new seat of the Natural Sciences Museum (the previous one burned down), and the huge central courtyard was turned into a public square (Plaza Cívica). There's a lot of space still unoccupied, or mostly unused.

I went there to visit a photojournalism exhibition — journalistic pictures taken in Argentina (and around) in 2006. It wasn't the last day to see them, but Wednesday was, and the visiting hours were really inconvenient. That's why Marisa missed it, and I went by myself at 2 PM, when everybody else was either having lunch or already taking a nap or working. It was a fairly large sample. It opened with a very significant picture of the recent past, the infamous shot of Alfredo Yabrán taken on the beach by José Luis Cabezas which probably cost the latter his life. The opening photograph for 2006 was a shot of Julio López facing a policeman, somewhere in court, during the trial of Miguel Etchecolatz. López disappeared, probably kidnapped by (former?) members of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, the same organization that Etchecolatz used to command and that abducted and tortured López and hundreds of others back in the late 1970s.

The rest of the pictures were varied: a visual document of the ecological disaster that is the basin of the Riachuelo; scenes from the re-burial of Juan Domingo Perón when gangs of members of different unions attacked each other; candid pictures of famous idols/characters (Diego Maradona, Mirtha Legrand, Charly García); poor children washing car windows in Buenos Aires; people who make a living scavenging for food in a trash dump on a daily basis; Evo Morales taking office as president of Bolivia in traditional indigenous garb; Jorge Telerman celebrating something; a woman threatening to kill herself with a knife; penguins in Antarctica; a picture of the Payún Matru volcano in Malargüe, Mendoza, composed exactly the same as one I took last January... I must have been one hour in there. Then I walked around, went up to the third floor, and took more pictures.

In the end I got back home after 4 PM, ravenously hungry and terribly tired. It was too late for a nap. I had to wait till Wednesday for that, and then I could only lie down for an hour; then I met Marisa to go and see another photo exhibition, this time at the Bernardino Rivadavia Cultural Center. It was a very nice sample of black-and-white pictures by Peruvian photographers: study takes of young ladies, a few nudes, pictures of miners, a bishop, a nun, families in their homes, Machu Picchu, doctors, acrobats, funerals, carnival celebrations, indigenous women and men in the Andes, very young drafted soldiers.

I would've liked to see and work with the cameras of those times. The pictures were large but had a definition that digital cameras are attaining only now, and then only if you have the luck to find a good photography shop to print your pictures as they're supposed to be printed.

We topped off the "weekend" with a "Back to the Eighties" party in a disco that used to be in fashion for young teenagers when I was one. It was fun for me to hear all those international hits again, but we discovered we're not made for this. I've always been bothered by the overcrowded, smoke-filled, noise-saturated environment of popular discos, but this time Marisa and I felt it was too much, and our adventure ended soon... True, we'd had no suitable rest, but at 3:30 AM we were so tired we had to leave. A couple of years ago I would've been ashamed of myself if I left a party before it closed down, and furious if someone dared close it down before 5 AM. Sic transit...

Weekend part 1: Visitors from Buenos Aires

It was a busy weekend. I signed up for Friday shodō (Japanese calligraphy) classes this year, and we began last week, so there I was at 7 PM, back at the old Japanese Association after my summer vacation and getting hisashiburi desu ne! ("it's been a while!") from everyone. You'll remember I decided not to keep on studying Japanese. I'm still firm on that, but I know I'm going to miss my gakkō. It's been four years and counting — you can't not get attached.

Just as we were beginning the class, I saw my first calligraphy teacher, Kyōko, just outside (I need to get a picture of her!). It was a huge surprise. She left for Japan in 2005 after two years volunteering in Argentina, but she made lots of friends, so she manages to visit every now and then, and now it seems she's going to stay and teach some Japanese.

After class I went to fetch Marisa and we took off for a friend of mine's birthday party at the Club Mitre (the place by the river, remember?). It was rather cool. We stayed longer than we'd planned. On Saturday morning we were supposed to be having a welcome breakfast for a couple of photographers visiting from Buenos Aires.

At 10 AM we were there with Claudio, another guy from the Rosarigasinos, waiting for our visitors to show up, when we got a call from one of them asking for directions. Fifteen minutes later, no sign of them, we called. They'd taken a wrong turn. Frantic exchanges ensued. They were using a GPS guidance system and it seems it was confused. Long story short, it was almost 11 AM by the time they were sitting before their coffee cups. Meet Slaff and SandroG...

Since the guys had to be somewhere else to have lunch at 1 PM, we could only walk them around for about an hour... They took a lot of shots of the river and the ships, and then we went down Oroño Boulevard, since they wanted to see old architecture. We only got as far as six blocks when their time ran out. They had some free time in the afternoon, so I hope they were able to see some more of Rosario, although in any case, as Sandro said, this surely wasn't the last time.

There was more to last weekend. The Japanese community was celebrating, and we were there to enjoy. Coming soon...

February, on closing

I've had this impression that February has passed too quickly. True, it's only the 25th, and even though this is a leap year it still has four days to go, but that's mostly done.

This February has been a slow photo month, in large part due to the sun and the heat. I just can't bear doing my picture-seeking rounds in 30+ degree heat with humidity almost visible, least of all when that kind of temperature persists after sunset. (For practical reasons, also, on weekdays I can't stay up and far from home hours after sunset — because the sun goes away at 9 PM and I've got to go to bed at 11 PM to wake up for work the next day.) I guess photographers who don't mind the sauna-like weather, or who can sleep during the day, might be OK with this state of affairs and content themselves with fascinating night pictures of the city. I'm not.

Might it be that February is intrinsically slow? There are no public holidays in February, except Carnival. When I was a little child I remember the beginning of the Carnival season was a huge party — you'd get little water balloons and chase your mates around, or launch the balloons at the girls, and play with your friends and your parents, ideally beside the pool, throwing water around with your garden hose or with buckets. Not only was it funny, it was a public holiday — two days off for everyone, if I remember correctly.

That all seems to have vanished. There are huge Carnival celebrations in some places in Argentina, such as Gualeguaychú, but they're local traditions, not official celebrations. I hear that Buenos Aires City public employees get Carnival days off, but no-one else does. Children are still not going to school, but nowadays when children chase one another in the street, it's commonly with rocks or kitchen knives, and if you throw a water balloon at a random child, you'll probably get beaten by one or both parents, no matter how truly festive your Carnival spirit was.

February also seems to be somewhat deprived of interest to the majority of us who, for whatever reason, see it as a "sandwich month". February is short and stays between the excitement of the New Year, vacations, the fullness of the summer, and the coming of the first cooler spells of March and of the "serious" part of the year — when people start showing less skin, everybody deserts the beach, and children begin wearing school uniforms and filling the early buses. As I said, no holidays, even though February 3 is the anniversary of the Battle of San Lorenzo and February 27 should be the true Flag Day. It seems no-one wants to celebrate in February...

... Except the Rosarigasinos, of course! The photo group decided to gather at the door of the Museum of the City in Parque Independencia to hit the amusement park. The idea, proposed by one of the guys, was doing what he dubbed a "Don Fulgencio Tour", Don Fulgencio being an old comic cartoon character known as "the man who had no childhood". Grown-ups enjoying children's games was definitely a good idea... with some reservations.

First I wanted to try the Ferris Wheel, only to learn that the ride was out of service for some unspecified reason. So we went and rode on the Caterpillar (the local version is known as the Gusano Loco, or Crazy Worm), which was a lot of centrifugal-powered simple fun. I remembered it being my favourite ride when I was a child, and realized I must be getting old when I felt the brief, but cold, bite of fear during the first few turns.

Then some wanted to check out the Mambo. Marisa and I decided that the Gusano had gotten us as much adrenaline as we wanted, so we and a few others stayed while the rest took their place in this round platform that revolved and rocked to the rhythm of cumbia and reggaeton, its passengers facing inward and pressed into their seats by centrifugal force, screaming and clinging frantically to the metal bars, a few heroic photographers trying to snatch pictures of the game from the inside.

Next the children wanted the Bumper Cars. I didn't feel like it; the cars were too many and so there was no room for anybody to bump into anybody as it should be done. Finally, we used our remaining tickets to ride the Loco Bus, a small, slow-moving pendulum ride with one big gondola in the shape of a bus with a cute face painted on the front. Harmless, childish even for an amusement park, good for grown-ups who don't really want so much excitement — so we thought. Wrong! The sensation of falling down backwards while your guts obediently stay behind owing to inertia was powerful enough. The swinging only looked slow from the ground. I got away from it unscathed, but others were not so lucky, and let's leave it at that. All I could say was, thank you thank you thank you for leaving the Ferris wheel out of service!

So this was, in a way, my celebration of February, my Carnival. This week is bound to be gray and rainy, and next Saturday begins March. Let's see what the serious part of the year has in store.

We interrupt this story...

... to bring you the latest news. We'll return to the chronicle of my vacations soon, but in the meantime, a march against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), its largest guerrilla group, took place in Rosario yesterday, February 4. Your host was there, doing some photojournalism at the request of Cristián, a fellow photographer and one of the organizers. I was given a Colombian flag ribbon and balloons of the same colours (yellow, blue, and red).

The FARC are the de facto rulers of a significant part of Colombian territory, and they've been responsible for thousands of kidnappings and many political assassinations in the last ten years. They're considered terrorists by most of the civilized world, as well as by the United States, though not by Brazil or Venezuela. They're known to fund their activities through illegal drugs and weapons dealing.

The march was one of many organized by grassroots groups in Colombia and throughout the world. In Rosario, it was attended by a small but determined group of Colombian immigrants, their families and friends, and other sympathizers of the cause. It went from Plaza Pringles to Plaza 25 de Mayo along Córdoba St., and finished on the courtyard of the Flag Memorial.

The march was completely peaceful, even when faced with a group of vociferous demonstrators who cheered for "Fidel [Castro], el Che [Guevara], [Hugo] Chávez and Evo [Morales]" and accused U.S. puppet Colombian president Álvaro Uribe of being a "fascist". Uribe tolerates paramilitary groups that are terrorists as much as the FARC, and adheres to the ridiculous "War on Drugs" and "War on Terror" conceptions of the U.S. government and G. W. Bush. For any sensible person who doesn't condone terrorism, of course, this doesn't mean that the FARC are OK just because they oppose Uribe's government and (somehow) Bush's foreign policy — sometimes the enemy of your enemy is not your friend, and sympathy with guerrillas who kidnap, torture and hold people in inhumane conditions for years in the jungle cannot be tolerated. (I'm explaining this simple fact because there are people who seem unable to understand it.)

I took a lot of pictures and a few videos. My girlfriend Marisa took a lot of pictures of her own as well, as did Cristián. * At the end the flags of Argentina and Colombia were flown, and their national anthems were sung. There was a speech and a prayer, and then the demonstrators gave people the rest of the pamphlets they'd brought to inform the public about the march. Marisa and I gave away our balloons to happy children, and went to see the sun go down beside the river.

*Links to my videos (Google Video): Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4. Marisa's photos: Contra las FARC.Cristián's photos: No más FARC.

A night of performers

No, this is not the same post as last weekend's... It's just that weekends are always full of culture these days. This time it was a Year's End event at the Flag Memorial, funded by a financial group. Friday was also Summer Day, although the southern hemisphere summer solstice fell on Saturday, December 22 this year, some 3 hours after the end of the event.

The show featured the Provincial Symphonic Orchestra, about 100 perfoming artists (for the dance parts), and 2 presenters who I would've just called "unnecessary" if they hadn't been so annoying. First there were a few melodies from old films' soundtracks (such as the overture of Gone with the Wind), then some tango dancing, then musicals (from Roxanne in the modern version of Moulin Rouge to some good ol' New York, New York), a lyrical gala, and a reprisal of the Cantemos la Navidad event. Save for the musicals, it was all very nice. The lighting and the choreography could've been better, but in any case musicals are not my thing. Tango dance, the same. The lyrical part was simply spotless.

Pictures follow. They came out much clearer than the ones I'd taken previously, because I used a tripod Marisa lent me (which she in turn got from her brother). I just set it up before me and shot bursts of six or five consecutive images at a time so I could pick the good ones.

There were fireworks later, but I had no time to set the camera correctly and decided to enjoy them with my eyes directly and let others take the pictures.

The Aeroclub tour

21 days
till vacation

This is the second installment of the recounting of last weekend. After the long Volunteer Firemen photo tour, we were starving, so we looked for a place that was cheap and abundant. We found a MacNolos. I can't remember when was the last time I couldn't finish my plate clean before that. Exhausted and full, I went back home and collapsed there.

My friend Gabriel called me at 9 PM to go out. Still a bit dizzy I took a shower, and off I went again to meet him and another friend, Mauro (the three of us are the ones going to Neuquén three weeks from now). We went into a noisy bar and just stayed there drinking beer, planning details of the trip, and gradually drifting towards less presentable topics. Considering I'd had more glasses of beer than hours of sleep during the previous 48 hours, I dragged myself back home with remarkable self-confidence. At noon I woke up and packed my gear for the Rosarigasinos photo tour of the Aeroclub Rosario.

I took a bus, fetched Marisa on the way, and we both arrived in Silvia's house. We waited for Lisandro, and then the four of us went on Silvia's car to Alvear, a small town south of Rosario, right next to Villa Gobernador Gálvez. Other people were arriving at the same time; when everybody was there we were 21 (I think) plus several children and two Beagle dogs.

The Aeroclub has a number of small planes and gliders and provides them (for a fee) for short flights over Rosario. I understand that the airplane's flight goes along the coast of the Paraná River, passes over the city center, and continues north until the Rosario–Victoria Bridge; it lasts 20 to 30 minutes. The glider is more dependent on the winds, so the flight path and length varies. The Aeroclub provides the planes and the pilots; the flight you pay after you touch down. You can also practise parachuting.

Most of us thought it a bit expensive for the time spent on the air (either flight was about AR$70; the parachute was more expensive), so we stayed on the ground chatting, sipping mate, eating cake and facturas and cookies, and taking pictures of flying objects of the artificial and natural kinds, of each other, and even of dogs and a toad.

It was a delightful afternoon. It's officially not summer until December 21, but this time of the year is usually much hotter and wetter. This year, however, the weather has stayed comparatively cool. We had more than enough shade, and a nice breeze. As the sun went down it became a little too cool for T-shirts and shorts.

We returned to Rosario with the dusk. Silvia wanted to go have something to eat, or a drink, but it was getting late and the next day was Monday, so I declined. I hate when that has to happen... but hey, this weekend left no space to waste.

The Volunteer Firemen tour

Retelling the weekend will take more than usual, since I was touring several places and barely touched down at home to eat (twice) and sleep (once). So I'll do it in two installments.

After a Friday night partly spent on a graduation party for a photographer friend of mine, Saturday started with a tour to the headquarters of the Rosario Volunteer Firemen (with the Rosarigasinos). These guys are truly awesome. While one of them patiently explained to us a myriad details about their job and their equipment, another one put on full firefighting gear and demonstrated the gas mask. A 18-year-old female cadet (the daughter of the first one) gave us even more inside information and anecdotes, both funny and not so.

We took hundreds of pictures of the whole place, the rooms, the equipment, the tools. I was delighted to discover an ancient Isuzu truck with the old Isuzu logo in Japanese (featuring the [nowadays almost unseen] hiragana iteration character), and an old R. E. Dietz 211 gyrating lantern. One of my fellow photographers' children and one of their friends came along, and had non-stop fun climbing on the fire trucks, ringing the alarm bell, and spraying us all (and our cameras, alas) with a high-power hose.

(I'll be uploading more pictures soon enough.)

The Volunteer Firemen receive very little monetary help from anyone, and they occupy old facilities that aren't really appropriate; you can tell that they're passionate about what they do, and they strive to do the most and the best under the circumstances. Considering they have families and day jobs, their efforts are laudable.

We are seriously thinking about turning the whole photo group thing into something with a solidary, social goal — for example, making Rosario-themed calendars with our pictures and donating the money (or the rights) to people like the Volunteer Firemen. Some legal juggling is needed, as well as contacts, and lots of patience to deal with bureaucracy. And of course, this is almost holiday and vacation season, so it's difficult to plan anything until March next year. But we're on it.

Culture and fun weekend

It's a good thing that you can have a culture weekend any time here in Rosario. On Friday I was alerted of an exhibition of photos by Joaquín Chiavazza, a photojournalist of the old La Tribuna newspaper: stunningly well-done black and white pictures from the late 1950s and early 1960s. There were people all dressed up at the then-popular horse track, with horses racing past the camera; images of car and bicycle races, no longer held in the city; picturesque traffic accidents, milkmen and their horse-pulled carts, women in a queue outside a school, waiting to vote for the first time...

This was at the Bernardino Rivadavia by Plaza Montenegro, and I'm told the rest of the photos (many more) are on display at the Museo de la Ciudad, which is not so conveniently placed, but I have a month to check them out (some samples online).

Then on Saturday I went again to the Museo Estévez. I think I didn't explain this before, so just in case, I'm doing a photo workshop there. The people of the museum are trying to expand their activities, and this includes extending their guided tour from the inside of the museum to the surroundings. The Estévez building is possibly the oldest house in Rosario that remains in more-or-less its original condition, and it's located in front of Plaza 25 de Mayo, the main town square of old, so just by walking around you're treading on the very historical core of Rosario. The Estévez decided to join this activity with a photo workshop with a downtown area theme. They'll collect pictures and do an exhibition of a selected group in April 2008.

So we walked a few blocks and learned a few bits of history and took some pictures. I had this nasty problem with my camera's memory card again, which seems to be unfortunately common, judging from the hundreds of complaints I've read about in web forums. Sony must have the worst quality control system in the world. So I took out the card and used the camera's internal memory. It's very weird, this thing when you can't capture any really good image even if you walk around shooting without concern for the space left in your card, and then when you have room for only a dozen shots, you get a few very satisfying pictures.

Cyclists near the stairs leading to the Flag Memorial

On Saturday evening there was a free show by El Choque Urbano at the Flag Memorial. El Choque Urbano are a group of guys who make percussion music using industrial objects, à la Stomp or Mayumana. Their budget's limited compared to Stomp, but they make up for it with very good acting. The show began at sunset before a crowded Flag Memorial courtyard, and lasted about two hours. I sat there with some of the Rosarigasinos and a few thousands of other people and enjoyed it very much.

I need to tell you that I'm madly in love with the Sony H7's hyperzoom. I was like 100 meters away from the stage and I could see El Choque's guys quite clearly. I took a lot more video but I was fearing the battery would die at any moment, and then at home couldn't be bothered to wait for it to upload on my faltering DSL connection.

We had a late dinner after the concert, and there was much rejoicing and dark beer and coffee and then some more coffee. I staggered back to the bus stop and got home at about 4 AM, where I promptly collapsed, only to wake up six hours later to prep an asado for a couple of friends. This kind of full-day fun marathon used to be easy for me to endure. I'm getting so old...

Rosarigasinos into the woods

We the Rosarigasinos went to do a photographic tour of the Bosque de los Constituyentes last Saturday (follow the link for more pictures, and try Flickr too). In case you haven't been following, we're a group of local photo freaks... er, amateur photographers, and we do these tours every month.

Constituyentes are the people who draft a constitution, and bosque means woods. The place was an environmentally damaged area and a no-man's-land in the northwest of the outer urban ring of Rosario, where the Ludueña Stream crosses beneath Circunvalación Avenue. It's a bit difficult to get there without a car and some courage, but now there's at least something to look forward to: 260 hectares (2.6 km²) of forest, plain and water, which took a lot of work to turn into a working ecosystem. They did it in the 1990s; people set fire to the woods several times, and there were other problems, but the place seems to be doing OK now. The trees planted there will reach maturity, according to the official brochure, in 2040, but there's a lot of life there already: pines and eucalyptus, several species of birds (kiskadees, lapwings, plovers, and others I couldn't identify), water turtles, and snails.

There are llamas as well! They were so out of place in this place, but it turns out they were brought in when the zoo closed. (There was a lot of debate when the municipality decided to close down Rosario's zoo. We're the only large city in Argentina without a zoo, and though the state of it was appalling, they could've tried to improve it instead of sending the animals away.) We tried to get close to the llamas but they didn't like it very much; the males came forward with threatening looks, and that was it.

I didn't think the tour was a good idea at the beginning, because it was so complicated to get there and because you have to get a permit to enter. I hate bureaucracy and I have no contacts, but fortunately other people in the group did, so after an exchange of emails and faxes and finally a personal phone chat with the head of the municipal park department, we were told it was fine for us 20 or so photographers to visit the woods for a couple of hours. There was nobody to guide us, as promised, and we overstayed a bit too. So much for bureaucracy! I'm glad to say nobody did anything ecologically irresponsible like lighting a cigarette or leaving plastic wrappings on the ground.

After the tour we grabbed something to eat at the patio de comidas of the Carrefour supermarket, and then we went home to rest for the night — since it was the birthday of one of the guys and we were having an asado. We were lucky the horrible storm that was forecast didn't materialize, or rather, it did but then vanished.

This is the first time we celebrate like this. As I said to the group, we've definitely moved ahead from being just an Internet-based photographers' group and picture repository to a group of people, colleagues, friends, or whatever you prefer to call it. I'm immensely grateful to these guys who have so casually turned into friends; if I were to sum up the brightest aspects of this year (yes, it's that time already) I'd surely place the Rosarigasinos at the top.

Photo tour to San Lorenzo

I went on a photo tour to San Lorenzo with the Rosarigasinos last Saturday. San Lorenzo is a city of 45,000 north of Rosario, within the metropolitan area. The region is densely populated and, in the case of San Lorenzo and the nearby towns, booming with light industrial development — petrochemical, vegetable oil, a cellulose plant... This combination gives the area a distinctive stench that fortunately doesn't reach the urban center of San Lorenzo, but is a pain along the road.

San Lorenzo is also known as the site of the only battle of the Wars of Independence to be fought in present-day Argentine soil. National hero, General José de San Martín, really liberated Argentina by defeating the Spanish in places located in neighbouring countries. The Battle of San Lorenzo was really a very small one (less than 1,000 troops counting both sides), but San Martín succeeded in thwarting a Spanish attack from the littoral, which was then rather wild and underpopulated. The rest of the battles he fought in Chile, Bolivia and Peru, closer to the local power centers of the time.

On Friday night there was a terrible storm, including some hail, and it still was raining from time to time when we gathered on Saturday morning, but by noon the sun was out in full force. We got on two cars and headed for San Lorenzo... it must've taken us an hour, because the road is narrow and not too good and it was being repaired and redone (they want to connect it to a highway). First we went to the Convent of San Carlos, where San Martín's forces rested.

There are Franciscans there still, but the convent is actually a museum. They preserve the room where San Martín stayed, others with objects used by the first monks, others with 19th century weapons, old letters and pictures, and all sorts of other objects up until the early 20th century. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

We had lunch in a restaurant nearby, and then visited the coast. The provincial government is working on it, reinforcing the ravine against erosion and planning a nice park and a promenade, not unlike what's been done in Rosario. The reinforcement is needed because the river naturally eats away the ravine, and the increased traffic of large cargo ships and the 34-foot dredging of the Paraná have only made it worse. The rest is just esthetic, which is not a bad idea considering the potential for historical tourism. Schools regularly take students to visit San Lorenzo, but it's really a minor thing.

In the afternoon we visited the Municipal Museum. I was favourably surprised by it. It had a collection of everyday objects from the past of the city, nothing of great economic value or splendid appearance, but very interesting nonetheless. It was well-lit and displayed, and nobody protested when we took pictures.

We stayed until nightfall and then (since the last of us had been left behind without a car) we returned on a packed interurban bus.

Days of black and white, and a good hair day

I always knew that growing my hair long again was an experiment... Satisfied with the result (that is, satisfied at the confirmation of what I already thought — that it was going to be a massive bother), I ended this experiment last Tuesday. I didn't dislike the long hair per se, but the time it took to take care of it. I reckon I'm saving ten minutes in the morning, during and after my daily shower; that means ten more minutes for me to enjoy breakfast before leaving for work, or ten more minutes to sleep.

The short hair has this one drawback, which is that it makes me look even younger. If I looked 25 before, I think I could now pass for a somewhat battered 20-year-old (especially if I'm clean-shaven). Countless people have told me (to no avail) that that's going to be a blessing when I'm 40. I guess they're right, unless a gene for wrinkles or baldness springs into action somewhere and decides to catch up.

I haven't blogged much lately because I've been writing for my website, about black and white photography, or rather, how to take a regular color image and turn it into a nice monochrome picture using a variety of methods. (Follow the link if you read Spanish, or if you believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, I'm ending the cloaking/deniability policy too.)

I've spent considerable time producing pictures and almost none doing anything to them, except posting them to Flickr. I was looking into deviantART as well; it seems more like the kind of exposure I'd like to have for my more artistic pictures, but I'm not sure it's what I want. (I really hesitate on calling some of my pictures "artistic" when a significant part of the work is done by a pre-programmed filter in the Gimp, but many in the deviantART community appear not be bound by such scruples.)

Expect more pictures soon, since I'm going to San Lorenzo with the Rosarigasinos tomorrow. I went to San Lorenzo by myself almost exactly one year ago, and I didn't find it spectacular, but a photo safari is an occasion to socialize, not just to take pictures, and you can always count on someone in the group to direct you to a spot you didn't know before.

Barrio de los Ingleses

Yesterday I told you about the photo exhibition. Well, after we finished setting it up, it was noon, so we decided to congratulate ourselves a bit and go celebrate. We went to a bodegón — one of those old-style, un-fancy restaurants that prepare great home-made-like meals. It was comparatively cheap, but very good (and abundant!). Our embedded storyteller and historian/anthropologist suggested (guess!) that we should go and take pictures.

A few blocks from the restaurant there's a group of old British-style houses that used to be the home of railway personnel one century ago. It's informally called Barrio de los Ingleses, and it's opposite the old company storehouses, nowadays recycled as the headquarters of the Nuevo Central Argentino. In fact it's just a couple of housing blocks only, outside the normal street grid, and seemingly outside of time — and location.

The place is called Batten Cottage. There's a string of nice small houses which were built for the VIP of the company, and a group of apartments for the common personnel, both temporary (passing by) and permanent. The apartments still keep their original number plates, and though the place is not exactly crumbling down in slow motion, most of it looks rather 19th-centuryish as well.

I'd passed by the Barrio de los Ingleses a million times, but I never dared get in and look around, least of all with my camera. There are people living there after all, and it's not exactly an upscale area, even though it's right beside a new park and near the shiny Alto Rosario shopping mall. Being with a group of half a dozen or so, however, I felt safe — we had enough cameras and the inquisitive attitude to convince anyone that we were curious tourists off the beaten track.

More pictures for your enjoyment right after this...