Took the bus down to Quilmes yesterday for the first time. Whodathunkit.

Boatmen take a break before unloading clay that will be used to make bricks in factories that line the Río Paraguay in Concepción, Paraguay.

“While we talked a lot about technology, sometimes the good ole stuff is pretty neat. These are two of six men who make two trips each day, seven days a week, to haul dirt from the other shore further up the river. It’s the first stage of making bricks.

“I found them in Paraguay, and they proceeded to show me which way to go to find the brick mill, where they were forming brinks and tiles by hand, drying them in the sun, preparing to bake them in a massive kiln that could
have been — and might have been — built in the early 1800s.”

—

I put this extended caption in quotations because it is from an email I sent to Andrew Matusik, an outstanding and engaging photographer I am currently writing about for an upcoming issue of Rangefinder. I don’t normally share work (or much at all) with the photographers I interview, even as I dig deep, deep into their personal histories and creative lives.

There is something about Andrew — I suppose his exciting insistence that he is only at the very beginning of his career, even as he achieve success that many photographers can only dream of — that I find particularly refreshing.

Andrew responded to my email with some very insightful comments, along with this black-and-white conversion of the image. Thanks for the feedback, Andrew!

Andrew's B&W version. Which one do you like better, and why?

Café con leche and medialunas in Buenos Aires.

I’ve eaten this classic Buenos Aires breakfast hundreds of times before, and I can imagine stopping anytime soon. This is what they just delivered me here at “Américas” restaurant here in the Caballito neighborhood when I ordered:

“Café con leche con tres medialunas de manteca.” The small glass of “agua con gas” is automatically delivered on the side and, in true porteño form, a pile of sugar is provided to dump into the rich, milky coffee. Talk about “yum!” meets “comfortingly familiar.”

Train Journey from Lima to Huancayo, Peru.

The train journey from Lima to Huancayo, Peru, is the second highest railroad in the world. Starting at sea level and landing at 4,200 meters in a small, valley city high in the Andes Mountains, the train tops out over 5,000 meters — in less than nine hours. The trip took 14 hours.

This tourist trip was the firs time the Huancayo line served passengers since a bomb destroyed bridge on the historic line in 1980s. All but eight passengers were Peruvians, many of whom seemed board on this inaugural tourist trop.

As the train strained forward on steep switchbacks, I found it hard to take in the expanse of the Andes. A treeless, brutal, gray mountain scape.

At the end of the trip, the few passengers still standing were festively celebrating in the rear observation deck, complete with bar, mounted on top of the framework of an old freight train.