New Aesthetic Values for an Old Town
Do I love yellow or what?
To appreciate an old colonial town like La Antigua Guatemala you need a new set of aesthetic values. See the beauty of many things in Antigua reside in their many imperfections; sometimes they are made to look like that. For instance, forged metal railings are hammered while red hot to to lose their perfect round or square shapes. New houses are built to look old and used. The same applies to brand-new furniture. The natural paint use on the façades of houses peels almost yearly and new coat is put on the old and after so many years you get really awesome looking textures. Besides, many things are still made completely by hand, thus it is impossible to get two items to look the same; quite the opposite to modern assembly and manufacturing lines where item one million looks exactly the same as any of the previous items. People actually appreciate the very old, antique and used-looking, with a few imperfections; the older the better. The harmony of all these elements, used, old, antique, imperfect, rusted, unfinished, peeled makes for the magic of walking around Antigua.
In the photo above you can see I am sucker for graphic, illustration like elements in photographs. I like the texture of the terra-cotta bricks, the wall, the window and warm yellow color. A tripod was necessary to get this shot. I hope you like it; make sure click on it to get the larger version.
Plagiarism Side Note: Last week today elPeriódico, my favorite Guatemalan national newspaper, published a photo from this site without permission and credited the photograph as one of their own. Here you can see a scan of the newspaper page, including the photo they took, published and credited as part of their archives. The photograph appeared in December 12th in this humble blog as Antigua’s Cathedral at Sunset. After I wrote them a few emails and posted about the plagiarism in my Crónicas efímeras Spanish blog (click to read the original entry in Spanish or in English through Google translator.) they publish a tiny apology in the last Saturday’s edition (click to the see the scan). Even though I wrote to them directly to let them know that the photo belonged to me and to this site, they never wrote directly to me to apologize for the plagiarism. After being told about the apology on Monday by a friend, I decided to not continue demanding a direct apology or compensation for violating my copyrights. The irony of the whole incident is that publish my photos with enough resolution so you can view them and use them, so long you credit me, you make no money off of them, no derived works are done from them. Most of the time a simple email requesting permission to use a photo is all it takes; I am easy fellow, you know.
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