thursday vertical

South American Rainbow Beetles

South America is full of Volkswagen Beetles. I began shooting this series when Suze and I were in Montevideo. This one was shot on the Uruguay coast in Punta del Diablo, close to the Brazilian border. It's so funny to see them all everywhere. You get the feeling like there's this secret army of old-school hippies motoring around.



If you click on the photo, it'll bring you to a collection of the Beetles I've shot, mostly in Uruguay and Peru. If anyone wants to sign me up for an advertising campaign with Volkswagen, holla!

coastal dreaming

Here's another photo from Punta del Diablo, Uruguay, in January. It was cooling off for a moment here in Buenos Aires and I thought that the summer was over, but then today it was 30C/86F, and sunny. So today I am dreaming of the cool coast.



I think I will need to get out of the city soon. Maybe this weekend I will go somewhere.

How much is head?

This is another thing you can buy at the flea market in Montevideo: a wooden head, nicely displayed...on the asphalt.



I like this photo because of the two women sitting in the background. People here are so good at sitting and chatting, or sitting and staring. And any place is good for sitting, just as long as there is shade. It also helps to have things to look at, like this disembodied head, and the stupid tourists taking photos of it.

to market!

The Sunday flea market in Montevideo is fun. You can buy everything there. A short list: fireworks, antique telephones, a white peacock (live), fishing tackle, and four identical framed photos of soldiers.



Definitely my favorite part of the flea market were all the random people selling puppies out of crates. But it also kind of broke my heart. I wouldn't want to be separated from my litter of fuzzy brothers and sisters and handed over to some sticky-fingered child. Unless, of course, he was going to share some of that ice cream cone with me.

a word on uruguayos

There is a noticeable difference as a photographer when you cross the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. Namely, that people in Montevideo don't really mind having their photo taken. In fact, this happened quite a bit in Uruguay:



They would wave you down, (even if it meant falling out of a moving vehicle), and pose. I have all these posed photos of men who just...I don't know...wanted their photo taken...with their shirt off.

two-fer sunday

These two photos have to go together. I spent New Year's in Punta del Diablo, Uruguay with Suzanna and a ton of Brazilians--it's just an hour from the Brazilian border. This is the full moon rising from the deck of our hostel, Elida Elena.



Between these two photos lay a night of partying, including non-ironic dancing to Bob Marley at Bitacora, a club that opened that night. The entire town was there. Suzanna and I walked down the beach to the first party around midnight, and fireworks were exploding everywhere. I probably could have died happily right there (as long as it wasn't a slow, burning, death-by-firework-in-the-gut). But if I had, I wouldn't have been able to witness the first sunrise of 2010.



What a year, 2010: so far, so good. And I really do mean "so far" and "so good."

hide and seek

In my host's subdivision, there were always people out, and it felt good. True, the subdivision was locked behind a gate, but it seems that everything here is locked up somehow and people just get used to it. In many retail stores and apartment buildings, you have to bet let in and out personally with a key.

These kids were having a lot of fun. When they were playing hide and seek, occasionally they would duck into the apartment of two older people who were just sitting outside their front door drinking mate.



In the evenings the older kids would come out. We spent Christmas night outside passing beers with the 20-somethings of the neighborhood.