Buenos Aires

The urban views of Buenos Aires by Michele Molinari presented in this book are the result of the photographer’s clear expressive need: to document the city in an unconventional way.

Unconventional means not tied to any cliché representation but, on the contrary, a well defined experience of the city seen through a “clinical” eye and lived in its many faces.

Michele Molinari had the chance to study the city since he enjoyed living there for an extended period of time, hence reflecting in depth on those characteristics that might escape a superficial glance.

This methodology allowed the photographer to verify the many peculiarities of  the Argentine capital’s architecture and urban layout, also giving him an opportunity to draw parallelisms between his personal experience as European, while directly referring to the Old Continent urban evolution of the last few decades in a few of Buenos Aires’ aspects.

The photographer’s shots absolutely do not want to trick the viewers into associating the city with decay or backwardness, rather help them focus on those constants that identify singularity.

Yet the choice to alternate, with a well studied visual equilibrium, black and white square photos and color panoramas, proves how Molinari’s shifts between details and wide views, giving the observer a balanced mix of unbiased outlooks and personal glimpses centered around his own experiences.

The result is a jungle of constructions, a forest of buildings, houses, factories and antennas arranged side by side without any precise design logic, but at the same time seemingly laid out in their lack of colors whose presence could have given a more agile rhythm, confused but definitely engaging. On the contrary, it all looks like an untouched palette barely soiled by shy hint of hue that gives to the whole an almost surreal and metaphysical feeling.

Walls, smooth and bare, which Molinari photographs closing up on its own camera lens, show a dreary and anonymous city side, even though in his framings, bolds and never coarse, the photographer is able to unearth and celebrate, of these white concrete buildings, a hidden and austere, almost majestic, beauty.