Documenting Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires since 2007
AfterLife Posts
From his last name, you can probably guess that he wasn’t of Italian or Spanish background. Born in Cádiz in 1866, Christophersen’s father was Norwegian & sent young Alejandro to Norway for university studies. He furthered his education in Brussels & Paris. Becoming a member of a prominent BsAs studio in 1888, Christophersen gathered enough clientele & clout to open his own office the following year. He spent three years in the province of Santa Fe but returned to BA in 1901 to become VicePres of the Sociedad Central de Arquitectos. At the same time, he created the School of Architecture as part of the University of Buenos Aires (no small accomplishment).
Over the next two decades, Christophersen reigned over Argentine construction & design mixed with brief periods in Paris where he studied painting. In 1930, he assumed directorship of the National Mortgage Bank but continued to work as an architect as well. Cristophersen died in 1946 in Buenos Aires leaving a legacy of 8 banks, 52 hotels/apartment buildings, 10 chapels/churches, 1 hospital, & 5 commercial buildings in Argentina. He’s widely regarded as the grandfather of Buenos Aires architecture.
For a look at some of Christophersen’s more important works, this post on our sister site Endless Mile discusses Christophersen’s legacy in Buenos Aires in detail.
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Governor of the province of Santiago del Estero in 1830, Manuel Alcorta relocated near Buenos Aires after being ousted from office by a local military uprising. He & his brother, Amancio, owned much of the land west of Buenos Aires, later becoming the district of Moreno. Now part of the urban sprawl surrounding the capital city, Moreno is 17 km directly west of BA.
Leave a CommentMarcelo writes about a recent photo exhibit:
Even though I’ve loved photography for a long time, I never had the chance to show my pictures in a exhibition. A couple of months ago, Eugenia—a dear friend from the “El Acorazado de Bolsillo” poetry magazine—offered to let me set up a one-night show in an old house in the city of La Plata (70 km south Buenos Aires). I had no doubt about the topic: images of cemeteries. I also chose the date for the show, November 2nd, traditionally known the Day of the Dead in many Western cultures.
I had a huge amount of photos to choose from, but most of them were taken with my old BenQ camera with very low resolution & I couldn’t make good large-size prints with them. But a week before the exhibition, Robert & I went again to Recoleta Cemetery & found a sky full of clouds, perfect for the macabre style of pics I wanted. Those photos were the core of the show.
The exhibit was named “Las Mansiones de la Noche” and was a really great experience… a lot of people looking at the photos, discovering images & unexpected tricks of shadow and light. It’s as if the photos weren’t mine anymore… they belonged to the beholder.
Now I’m trying to exhibit the pics in other places. Next time it could be in Buenos Aires… who knows?
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