Untitled from "Siesta Argentina"

Although the photographer Facundo de Zuviria was born in Argentina, far from the United States and Germany, he works firmly within the established lyric documentary tradition of Walker Evans and Bernd and Hilla Becher. This photograph is from the artist's now renowned "Siesta Argentina" series made in 2003 during the terrible years of the Argentine economic crisis that began at the end of 2001. With an economy of means and perfect frontality, Zuviria recorded with deep respect the closed facades of modest businesses (dry cleaners, small manufacturers, bars) lining the streets of his home city of Buenos Aires. With their gates pulled down–on siesta–and with no trace of any city dwellers except at times in their sprawling graffiti, the shops are presented with simple respect and subtle beauty as mute, blackened mirrors of a lost time and place. These contemplative photographs ache with pathos. They update with poignancy the photographic traditions of the great twentieth century visual documentarians with whom Zuviria has so productively immersed himself.