Murals In Iguazù, Hummingbird Tongue, Tres Fronteras, Marta Schwartz

We flew to Mendoza yesterday.  More on this wine country city later.  Here are some more shots from  Iguazú.


The first is at a hummingbird ‘park’.  It’s really the backyard of an Iguazú family and has been operating for 40 years.  There are lots of feeders and birds besides hummingbirds show up.  We went there at the end of our birdwatching Tuesday morning.  More on this later, but I wanted to share this  picture that has the hummingbird’s tongue.

  

At first.I thought it was the sugar water coming out, but Fernando said it was the tong ue.

 
The local indigenous people are the Guarani.  I can’t find anything in English on Guarani in Iguazú so here is something in Spanish (use Google  Translate if you need to).  I’m not sure how sensitive this account is, so read with cutural alerts turned on.

This says (very loosely)  it’s a community for growing small gardens for women who want to be entrepreneurial.

  

   This sign, I’m told, is an advertising for ca rds and tarot readings and other ‘black magic’ to help find jobs, mates, and anything you need.  

My wife noted that she hadn’t seen any statues of women and then I saw this bust of Dr. Marta Teodora Schwartz, “the angel of the forest.”    Again, it’s in Spanish, but I don’t have time to get a translation for you.  Google translate is very easy to use, just cut and paste, and it’s really pretty good translations.

And here’s a church nearby named after Señora [I’ll add this in when I get more time].

And at this point you can see Brazil across the river to the right, Paraguay across the other river to the left, and a bit of Argentina from where I’m taking the picture - Tres Fronteras. 

  

And one last mural.  I have no idea what it means.  

Recoleta Open Market

The cemetery is a major destination in Buenos Aires, but while we had passed it, we hadn’t had time to go in.  An added bonus of going yesterday was the Recoleta weekend outdoor market around it on Saturday.  Here are a few pictures to give a sense of it.  Basically it was decorative arts - lots of jewelry, leather work, clothing, paintings, and other odds and ends.

  

There was even a bit of tango in front of the entrance to the cemetery.   The paintings weren’t my style.  A lot of pictures of Argentine themes and then stuff like this.

 

 Mate (pronounced MA-te) is an Argentine tea.  You stick a lot of leaves into the cup and keep refilling it with hot water and drink the tea through a metal straw.  This man is selling mate. Cups and straws.

“Drinking mate is highly ritualised, its conventions and procedures are fixed and never broken. Gringos stirring the tea with the bombilla will, for example, be met with Argentineans diving to recover the mate. It is just one faux pas among many”. [From The Real Argentina ]

This woman below had beautiful painted boxes and other small items.

I couldn’t figure out how to take a good picture of all the booths that make up the market.  So this picture is here just to give you a vague sense.  In parts there are booths on both sides.  This was when we first got there and more vendors kept showing up.

No Power, Then Powerful Art of Carlos Alonso

We had to decide when we got out of customs, between a bus into the downtown station and a cab.  In the end, the cabs were only about $33 into town and would take us directly to our home stay, that was arranged by the language school where we begin a week of Spanish lessons Tuesday.  (Monday is Argentina’s National Day, so no classes.). Our driver was friendly and spoke very little English and so I had to use my Spanish and we managed fine.  

My pictures on the way from the airport were on my iPhone and I still haven’t figured out how to get them to the iPad.  

We’re in an apartment on the 4th floor - very nice, and the host is great.  Her English is terrific, which isn’t good for our Spanish, but we are learning a lot about Argentina and Buenos Aires.  She has a couple of young men staying here too who are also going to the language school.

We went out last night just to get our bearings - well, we were trying to go before it got dark, but with the clouds it was already pretty dark at 5pm - and to get a bus card - SUBE - and Argentine chips for our phones.  We got both, but still haven’t gotten the phone chips fully activated.  

This morning I didn’t wake up until 11am.  When I got to the bathroom, the light didn’t go on.  But there’s a window.  I didn’t think much about it.  But then our host told us that there was a power outage for all of Argentina and parts of Uruguay and southern Brazil.  For us, there wasn’t a big impact.  No internet.  But the stove is gas, so we could make breakfast.  It was raining, hard, then light, then hard again outside.  There was some thunder and lightening.  

But eventually we decided to go the Museum of Belle Arts - seemed like a good idea for a rainy day.  The collection includes many famous European artists.  Nothing spectacular that I notice.  There was a room of Rodin, and examples of different periods including Rembrandt to Modigliani.   There was one red room with a lot of pictures that was someone’s collection donated to the museum.  (1)

But then we found an exhibit of Argentine artist Carlos Alonso.  Wow!   What powerful stuff.   He was born in 1929 and studied in Argentina and Europe.  His work is full of allusions to other artists’ work and politics.  From Wikipedia, we learn, perhaps why:

“Alonso married the artist Ivonne Fauvety.[7] Following the coup of 1976, and the disappearance of his daughter Paloma (born 25 July 1956) the following year, Alonso went into exile in Italy, and in 1979, he moved to Madrid. He returned to Argentina two years later. The Bienal de Pintura Paloma Alonso. named in her honor, is a 1990 joint initiative of Alonso and Teresa Nachman“

Though there were already pieces from the 60s that were pretty edgy.  [Due to the troubles I’m having with blogger in my iPad, I’d doing this in Pages and will cut and paste it into blogger and see if that works better.  But I’m not going to try to mix pictures and text too much because that’s been problematic  on the iPad.]

(2) Sin Pan y Con Trabajo  [Without bread and with work](1968)

Alonso:  “One of the keys that explain the life of Van Gogh is that he (perhaps every painter) becomes the sine of a society. Van Gogh is the sign of something that is rotting and that a new world is born. What he creates is“ (3)

The Hospital (1974) (4)

The Palm  (1952) (5)

Anatomy Lesson 1979. (6)

“Carlos Alonso was inspired by Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicotlaes Tulp (1632) as the starting pint for the series dedicated to the death of Ernesto “Che” Gueverra.  In these works begun in 1969, the body of the recumbent Che also recalls the famous Christ of Andrea Mantegna, from the 15th century. [There are several paintings, only the one is shown.  Not this one.].   The scenes Alonso presented also gave hints of a torture table and the photographs of the dead Guevara that circulated at the time and that were the source of the series.What emerges out of the intermingling of the various images is a hybrid of meaning  between that figure of Christ and that of Guevera.  At the same time , Alonso sparks a second interchange:  that of the languages of the eras of Dr. Tulp and of Che.  Figures from the 17th century blend with those of the 20th century, rendered in the manner of pop art and advertising codes.”   From the exhibition description English version

We had pizza near the museum walked a bit, then took the bus back.  But in what was by then dark with the bus windows fogged up, we went past our stop.  Though I’m not sure we would have seen it under better conditions.  But we figured it out and got back ok.

[Sorry I can’t adjust the fonts either.]. 

Garden Calder

Our bleeding hearts are blooming nicely now.

They made me think of the Calder we saw at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last February.

Luigi Toscano's Holocaust Portraits And Nathan Jurgenson's The Social Photo

The San Francisco Civic Center Plaza had about 80 of the giant portraits.  Each had a little sign (if you look closely, you can see it on the right in the middle.)

I'm afraid the title of the post promises a lot more than I can deliver.  But the title can at least point to what I'm thinking about as I write this post.   I've got too many backed up, unfinished posts.  These portraits made me think about the nature of portraits and how they're displayed (in addition to the content of the portraits.)  Jurgenson's book is also playing with my understanding of photos in general, and how digital photography and social media change human relationships with photographic images.  Here are the  two catalysts:

1.  Lest We Forget by Luigi Toscano - and installation we saw recently in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza.

Click to enlarge and focus better

And 2.  The Social Photo:  On Photography And Social Media,  a very new book by Nathan Jurgenson that investigates the the meaning of photography in the digital age and how we need to rethink our mental frameworks of photography to understand what's happening.


The notion of portraits has changed over the years.  From the Tate Museum:

"Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt, where it flourished from about 5,000 years ago. Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the appearance of someone. 

But portraits have always been more than just a record. They have been used to show the power, importance, virtue, beauty, wealth, taste, learning or other qualities of the sitter. Portraits have almost always been flattering, and painters who refused to flatter, such as William Hogarth, tended to find their work rejected. A notable exception was Francisco Goya in his apparently bluntly truthful portraits of the Spanish royal family."

Photography changed things dramatically.  And cameras on phones changes things even more.  From Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 139-143). Verso.

"Photography is a technology of instability . It stages a play of the real and the simulated, the apparent and the contrived, the creative and the mechanical. And photography is itself always in flux, from plates to film, paper to pixels, to more people carrying more cameras more of the time. These changes affect who makes images, where, why, how often, and for whom. There has been a recent and massive shift in who sees any photograph, and the audience for images that social media promises alters what a photograph is and what it means."

Basically, Jurgenson is arguing that the age of digital photography along with social media presents us with a world of photos that the academic world of photography has essentially ignored because they still use the 'art model' of photography to consider photos.  Snapshots don't matter in their eye.

"This is a perspective rooted in art history, one that deals with galleries, museums, and professional work and is tangential to all but a tiny fraction of images made today. The vast majority of photos perform functions distinct from those of documentation or art. The quick selfie reaction, the instantly posted snapshot of nice sunlight on your block, the photo of a burger sent to a friend: these kinds of images are of central importance to photography as it occurs today, but they are not as well conceptualized or understood. These everyday images taken to be shared are examples of what I am calling social photography. Other names include “snapshot photography,” “personal photography,” “domestic photography,” “vernacular photography,” “networked images,” “banal imaging,” or, as Fred Ritchin differentiates in Bending the Frame, an “image” as opposed to a photograph.  All these terms are meant to distinguish social images— the overwhelming bulk of photographs being made today— from those weightier images made with that traditional understanding of photography as something more informational, formally artistic, and professional."   Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 147-156). Verso. 

Her plaque identifies her as

Rachel Goldfarb

(Dokszyce/Poland 1930)

Nazi Armys occupied hometown/

moved to ghetto with the family

Jewish population numbered close to 3000/

Were not sent to concentration camps

but murdered by Nazis/

Less than a dozen survivors/

Only Rachel and her mother survived 

from extended family

1942 went into hiding with family

Brother discovered and killed

Survived with her mother with Russia underground

(partisans)

Liberated by Soviets/Experienced widespread and

overt antisemitism in Poland

Left for Italy

1947 migrated to United States

Lest We Forget - Washington 01-21-2018

OLEKSANDR SKLIANSKI

(KIEV/UKRAINE 1937)

"THANKS TO 

YEVGENIA BOBOVIK AND VIKTOR BOBOVIK

AS WELL AS THEIR DAUGHTER YELENA

MY BROTHER AND I WERE SAVED

FROM BEING SHOT DEAD IN BABI YAR.

THEY BECAME OUR COMPANIONS

ON THE ROAD TO PEACE."

LEST WE FORGET - KIEV/UKRAINE 26-02015

SUSAN CERNYAK SPATZ

(VIENNA/AUSTRIA 1922)

MAY 1942 ORDERED TO

THE GHETTO THERESIENSTADT

WITH THE MOTHER

JANUARY 1943 DEPORTATION TO

THE CONCENTRATION 

CAMP AUSCHWITZ-BERKENAU

JANUARY 1045

DEATH MARCH TO THE CONSTRATION 

CAMP RAVENSBRÜCK

SPRING 1945 LIBERATED

BY THE RED ARMY

LEST WE FORGET -  HEIDELBERG 18.09.2014

These descriptions are just the briefest references to a period of their lives lived in  horror and only the present locations and dates of the photos and the visual images themselves hint at the lives since the end of the war.  Though they never escaped the horrors that stayed with them the rest of their lives.

My stepmother could be one of these portraits.  She, like Susan Cernyak Spatz, was born in 1922 in the Austro-Hungarian empire (in Bratislava) and also was sent to Theresianstadt.  She eventually lived her life out in Southern California.  In 2014 she could have posed for one of these photos, but she passed away in 2018.  So maybe these portraits resonate with me more.  Here she is in 2015 on her 93rd birthday.  She didn't have a professional photographer (not sure how he got those little spots in everyone's eyeballs), nor was she allowed to put on some make-up and jewelry.  Not sure she would approve of this photo here.  But it's one more face for the record.    Who knows, she may have known Susan Cernyak Spatz at Theresienstadt.



Luigi Toscano's exhibit seems to recognize that people's relationship with photography is different now.  From LEST WE FORGET statement in San Francisco (the LEST WE FORGET photo above.)

"Instead of exhibiting them in a museum or a gallery, Luigi Toscano always presents the large-scale portraits in public places, such as parks, public squares or on facades, so they are accessible to everyone.  In this way, LEST WE FORGET reaches thousands of people regardless of age, origin, language or education.  Small information panels, a picture book, and a documentary movie complete the installation."

SF City Hall in background.

Nathan Jurgenson wouldn't count these as 'Social Photos":

"My interest here is with a type of photography made ubiquitous by networked, digital sharing, though many of its characteristics can be found in different degrees in pre-social media photography, especially amateur snapshots (Polaroid sharing in particular). For my purposes here, what fundamentally makes a photo a social photo is the degree to which its existence as a stand-alone media object is subordinate."  Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 158-160). Verso. 

These aren't the instant photos taken on someone's phone and then immediately texted to someone as part of a conversation.  Clearly Luigi Toscano thought carefully about each portrait and how to package them and where to display them so that they would be seen and attended to by many people.  Looking at these giant face images in person, faces almost as large as the viewer, has a big impact.  The holocaust survivors are almost gone.  I suspect many, if not most in the installation, have pass away already.

 But there is no shortage of victims today, people being killed and maimed and terrorized by American made weapons as well as those made in Europe and Russia and Israel.  They are not that different from the Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany, just in the manner of their suffering.  But the Jews of Europe were easy to ignore while they were being slaughtered, just as the people of Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and the refugees from terror in Africa and Central America are easy to ignore today.

As I get to the end here, I realize that this mashup of Luigi Toscano's photos and Nathan Jurgenson's book may be a little forced.  And I may post more on Jurgenson's book later.  But here's a bit more:

"Photography theory’s long marginalization of amateur snapshots has left a shortfall of reference points for making sense of social photos today. The dichotomies of “amateur vs. professional” and “digital vs. analog” matter less for the social photo than the relations between power, identity, and reality. The fixation on professional and artistic photos comes with conceptual baggage rooted in other fields, much of which should slide to the margins when discussing social photography. The center of conceptual gravity for describing how people communicate with images today."  Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media (Kindle Locations 167-171). Verso. 

LEST WE FORGET website.
Jurgenson's book website.

Back In SF Doing Best Job In The World

We get up early to help get our grandkids ready for pre-school.  Then we jump on the bus with them and get them there.  Today we went on a field trip with the youngest to the de Young museum.  What a delight to help shepherd a line of little ducklings down the street, onto the bus, then back down the street to a path in Golden Gate Park.

We got a quick lunch on Clement where it's one Chinese restaurant after another.  Then back to the museum for ourselves - it was a free day.  We decided that the Monet exhibit was more than we needed to pay, since we'd gotten a good dose two years ago in Paris.

Back home for a quick name, then back on the bus to pick them up again.  Here are some pics.  (The family kid pics are not allowed here, so everything else.)

We didn't know it was there til we walked by it.  The Internet Archive website says this (in part):

"The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.
We began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, a medium that was just beginning to grow in use. Like newspapers, the content published on the web was ephemeral - but unlike newspapers, no one was saving it. Today we have 20+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine and we work with 450+ library and other partners through our Archive-It program to identify important web pages."

My grandson had told me that if we go to the de Young museum that we should go across the plaza to see the electric dinosaurs at the Cal Academy.  

We just looked in from the other side of the fence.  The T-Rex moves slowly, but realistically and makes lots of menacing noises.

Before we got to the museum the ducklings stopped near this rock to have snacks.  What I found significant was that this memorial to WWI (yes I) dead, said on top:  "In Memory of Our Sons and Daughters."  Yes, 'and Daughters" for WWI.  WWI was 100 years ago!





This is outside at the de Young museum.  From the inside, the panel is just a clear window.

The description reads:

"Unidentified artist
A Peyote Vision of our Grandfather Fire,
ca. 1950
Mexico, Michoacan, Wixáritari (Huichol)
Yarn, adhesive, and board"

This is a Frank Stella

 "Honda Syoryu (b. 1951)
Aurora, 2006
Madake, rattan"

"Mother Nature
2019"

Playing With Bread (And Photoshop)

I started here.  Well that's not exactly true.  I started with the sourdough starter to make the bread.

But photographically, I started with this picture.  I took it to photoshop.

I went into filters.  I wasn't sure what I could do with this picture, but I thought I'd see where it would take me.


I went into filters and tried several and they weren't exciting me.  But Paint Daubs had possibilities.

But only if I got closer and played some more.  So first I got closer.

That's more interesting, but not really as compelling as I want.

So let's try curves.  That's a feature in Photoshop where you play with a curve to change colors and light.  It doesn't have precise settings like Filters.  You just have to play until you get what you want.


That eventually got me here.  Much better.




 It's got some Hundertwasser echoes.

The rest was pretty easy.  I just copied this image and went into edit/transform/distort until I got what looked like a flap.  Then I copied it and flipped it vertically so I had the two flaps. I put a gray edge on the flaps because the colors blended too much to see the edges.   And put in a background color and cropped it.  

The final product:  

I guess I could call it bread and nobody but you and me would know why.  The real benefit of this is to experiment and see what I can do.  And I confess, these are all techniques I've used before.  I should just look up Photoshop tricks online to figure out tools I don't know how to use yet.  And my brain needed something other than politics or even just words today.