Buenos Aires International Airport is old. Airports can make the worst first impression. Like dirty fingernails. The City is so big. Too big to swallow in a week. Too big to swallow in a month. Like an overdone steak. You chop off bits and stomach it piece by piece. Calle Florida is one big chunk of people and movement and noises and footsteps and hagglers and shoes and fashion and pamphlets and leather handbags. And nobody speaks English. Nobody knows where Cape Town is. Table Mountain? What? Nobody knows who you are. The world according to the Latin Americans is very different. They have their own concerns. The earth is shaped like a Fútbol. Boca Juniors is its Capital.

I love Cities. The warm black silhouettes passing. Block by Block. Every street I’d want to own an Italian Renaissance apartment in. I’m walking down 23 blocks of Avineda Sante Fe. For days I had Subte Fear. Fear of the Subway. Fear of losing myself underground in a Spanish Catacomb. But now I’m rushing to catch the train, and then rushing out to the exit. For no reason. Everyone else is rushing. Everything points to Salida. I’ve had my cultural roots pulled. I feel like I’m in the second chapter of a Satre Novel. Nausea. I’ve been shooting all day and I’m starting to see things in 70-200mm f2.8 with that soft focus in the foreground. Maybe it’s the Jet Lag.

You think you’re going to Argentina to capture the Authentic. You use big words like Culture and Street Life as if everything is supposed to look like a 1920’s Parisian suburb. Or something out of Borges story. On day one you discover a McDonalds in the city’s main Plaza. There’s gaucho’s with Toyota 4×4’s. They’re cantering on suburban streets. Graffiti on the walls. There’s the Cardboard people collecting pieces of the night. There’s the grey city girls with their folders. The city girls love to carry folders. Every city girl needs a folder. The best coffee was from Starbucks in Galerías Pacífico on Florrrriiiiida. Is this what I came here to capture? The City comes to me in a mess. My shots are a mess. They have too much distance. And now I don’t take out my Camera in public so liberally. You think about that guy who got beaten up in Plaza St Martin. It’s still a City remember.

Walking through the galleries. The contemporary collection of MALBA and the Futurism from PROA. God I love prints. Maybe I should have a gallery. What are the economics of being a Famous Artist? After one week, the City opens up to you. Or maybe your eyes open. There is the beauty, yes. Streets and Streets of beautiful buildings. You’ve eventually worked out how to use the @ sign on a Spanish keyboard. Every second Porteneo woman belongs in a modeling agency.

By day 10 I missed Cape Town. My morning rituals. The Single Lattes. The Surf. The pool at Virgin Active in Wembley. My friends, my girlfriend. My Nerves are frazzled. Sick of the overdubbed American movies you’ve seen before. Ugly Betty sounds better in Spanish. Caught a Train to Tigre and got lost in town for 3 hours trying to find either the River or some free WIFI on my Blackberry. It’s time to go home.