Magic Realism

My steady steps lead me away from the Obelisco, at that time of the evening when the changing colors of the sky seem to be connected to the shades of the illuminated monument. It's almost six o'clock and the city still has a lot to tell. At this time, Buenos Aires replaces the transparency of the day with an ambiguous play of lights and shadows where the boundaries between tranquility and insecurity, illusion and reality condense into the fragile interpretation of those who perceive them. The streets of the city center look like the labyrinths intertwined in Borges’ masterpieces and the flowing life looks like a literary invention about to converge "in the enchantment of a moment when things seem to be about to reveal their secret".

I feel like immersing myself in this illusion, eager to discover the truth that this night has to tell me. I put on my earbuds and select Shuffle Play on Spotify to isolate myself from the noise of cars racing like unstoppable shards on Avenida Corrientes, and while the music echoes in my head, I walk past lost souls wandering along the avenue. Suddenly, my incessant walk falters at the height of the Gran Rex Theater, shaken by the riff of an electric guitar, fifteen unmistakable seconds of notes that precede the first verse of the song that has just started.

“Si a tu corazón yo llego igual, todo siempre se podrá elegir”

"Seguir Viviendo sin tu amor" by Luis Alberto Spinetta starts exactly as my shadow skirts the theater that saw "El Flaco" as the protagonist of memorable concerts many years ago. Coincidence? Fiction? Reality? I don't have time to linger in the doubt that slowly overwhelms me; I must march quickly to reach La Plazoleta del Tango, right in front of El Centro Cultural Kirchner, where an event is taking place. For years, I've dreamt to photograph ordinary people embracing the deception of a moment entwined with the notes of a sad thought. I have to hurry; the shadows of the evening are about to become intense and I would struggle to protect those highlights that make a photograph memorable.

El Centro Cultural Kirchner dominates that small pocket of city where past, present, and future of Buenos Aires meet: the Casa Rosada and the skyscrapers of Puerto Madero are almost equidistant from the thresholds of the immense building and the historical Plaza de Mayo is almost perceptible. I think that this is the perfect place for Tango, for its hybrid history, for its ability to merge distinct generations in a dance where age and social status do not count: old and new, wealth and humility, desire and resignation meet on the dance floor, and the wrinkled and young faces that brush against each other during three minutes of dance, seem to symbolize the monuments that surround the square.

That warm light photographers crave filters among the buildings that line Avenida Leandro Alem. It’s a much more interesting shade than the 4000 Kelvin coming from the spotlight positioned on the short side of an imaginary rectangle, delimited by hundreds of chairs placed on the long sides, from where people observe the dancers moving counterclockwise. In the center of the rectangle, two professionals open the dance to the notes of "Mi Buenos Aires Querido" and around them a swarm of souls begins to rotate incessantly, tango after tango, stopping only in the brief intervals devoid of music when the couples break apart.

I kneel down to find an interesting angle and not to be a hindrance to the people who cross the edges of the track, and I make the mistake of looking through the viewfinder of the camera. I start taking dozens of exposures without first observing, without first establishing a chemical relationship with the universe in front of my eyes without first photographing it with my eyes before doing it with the camera shutter. I change position, move in the opposite direction of the dancers to capture their steps, their faces, and those controlled, spontaneous, genuine movements that fade away relentlessly.

While circumnavigating the track for a few minutes, I stand in the same position of Arturo, a photographer from Chile in love with Buenos Aires, who arrived in the city a few days ago and, like me, eager to take away visual mementos that freeze imperceptible moments of daily life. We talk for a while, exchange some opinions, and ask each other if we have already taken that photo that makes us go home satisfied. I shake my head, I haven't reviewed the images on the back screen of my Fujifilm, but I know that I haven't yet made the exposure I'm looking for because when I shoot a keeper I feel a sense of fulfillment and certainty that penetrates from the outside in when I click the shutter-release button of the camera. That same feeling I used to feel years ago, in a now distant life, on the football pitches of Southern Italy, when I knew that the ball would go in the back of the net even before my left foot had hit it.

Perhaps it’s my compulsive obsession to do my best to reach high standards, but I am not happy with the shots taken, I need a special photo that combines the essence of tango, I want a sober, simple, passionate, seductive and at the same time nostalgic shot. But it is difficult to completely abandon oneself to photography in a moment of such beauty where the pleasure felt in admiring the harmonious synergy of bodies can only be elevated by joining that swarm of people who share unrivalled moments during short dances, before getting lost in other people’s arms. The music is touching, the dancers bewitching, and the voice of Gardel, the bandoneon of Piazzolla transport my thoughts far away, nearby, everywhere.

Just like the cars on Avenida Corrientes, this fusion of emotions has become almost noise, and to touch the pure beauty circumscribed between illusion and reality, I need to isolate myself, to detach myself from that emotional involvement, I need to dive in the inner silence capable of capturing that fleeting decisive moment hidden in the dancing crowd. I put my headphones back on, let Spinetta's song start again, bring the camera as close as possible to the face, and I just wait. I just have to wait for a handful of seconds because she emerges from the crowd, a girl with a young skin and an ancient look, an abstract literary invention tiptoed out of the most refined steps of a novel conceived in the nearby Café Tortoni, a morocha (a brunette) with a delicate yet marked face, like the rudiments of this Argentine land, homeland of migrants and dreamers, mother of generations suspended between past and future.

I see her twirl for a moment, she lingers around the man who will be hers for just three minutes, then lifts her intense, nostalgic, poetic, solitary gaze and looks far away, as if searching for something, for someone, as if she’s searching for her own truth, exactly when Spinetta's voice sings:

“Y si acaso no brillara el sol
Y quedara yo atrapado aquí
No vería la razón
De seguir viviendo sin tu amor”

The shutter clicks, I feel the vibration that, from the finger resting on the shutter-release button, runs down the arm and deeply melts inside me, and I understand that this is the long-awaited shot. I bring the camera to my chest, watch the girl and her partner complete six steps of Baldosa, then she disappears into the same crowd she had emerged from, almost as a rueful return to that reality far from the horizon where she had placed her gaze. I immediately look for Arturo to share the photo, but he’s gone, and hoping that he too had captured what he was looking for, I sit on the steps of the Kirchner, remove the headphones and listen to Gardel's "Volver" come out of the speakers.

It's time to go with the flow and watch the crowd dance. I start wondering if this visual epiphany was coincidence, reality, or fiction. Maybe coincidence, maybe reality, maybe fiction, maybe the sum of everything or absolute zero, maybe an insane moment immortalized in 1/250 of a second, but for sure this is what I was looking for. This exposure is nothing but my tainted truth lost in an intimate gaze that looks far away towards distant latitudes.

I stand up, the skyscrapers of Puerto Madero are now illuminated by artificial light, I stare at Casa Rosada shine in the dark and discreetly walk into the night of Buenos Aires.

Y hoy que enloquecido vuelvo
Buscando tu querer
No queda más que viento, no
No queda más que viento

Y si acaso no brillara el sol
Y quedara yo atrapado aquí
No vería la razón
De seguir viviendo sin tu amor