Architectural Photography - Week 24 | "Capture, Click, Compete!" | The colorful and artistic quarter

charter (68)modClub 100 | 🇪🇦in CCS • 5 months ago

The neighborhood of La Boca, in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, is famous for two things - La Bombonera, the football stadium of local giants Boca Juniors, and El Caminito, a small cobbled street where many independent artists sell their canvases and tango dancers show off their skills. allowing tourists to capture some wonderful heated purely Argentinian moment.

Painted in all the colors of the rainbow, the buildings on both sides of the famous street are perhaps one of the most famous images of Buenos Aires.
La Boca means "the mouth" in Spanish and is so named because it is located at the mouth of the Riachuelo River. Originally, the neighborhood was practically home only to a powerful and influential shipyard. The people who lived in the harbor area were so poor that they built their houses using discarded shipbuilding materials such as planks and corrugated iron. They also painted their houses with the remaining unused paints.

Logically, considering that paint was also among the discarded materials for the residents, there was not enough paint of the same color to cover their entire houses, so the different homes became a colorful little neighborhood of color. As the years progressed and a new port was built, people began to move and the number of people living in the area steadily decreased.

La Boca's revival began in the 1950s, when local artist Benito Quinquela Martin began painting the old houses in bright colors, just as poor immigrants had done years before. He also erected a makeshift stage for performances, and La Boca quickly became a small cultural haven for street and independent artists.

Today, El Caminito and La Boca have become a huge tourist trap, full of street vendors selling cheap souvenirs, expensive clothes and junk food. Regardless of all the classic tourist services, the neighborhood continues to be among the most "Argentine" places in Argentina. Unfortunately, it also continues to be among the poorest areas of Buenos Aires.

A feast of colors. This is one of the most colorful neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. And a must-stop for all tourists. The legendary neighborhood was assembled from the imagination of Genoese emigrants.

Colorful, magnetic and different! The emblematic district, symbol of the 18 million-strong metropolis! The colorful architectural patches of sheet metal and boards are one of the city's most magnetic attractions in the open air.

The feeling, especially for photographers, is great because everything is colorful, people are positive, dancing, offering to dance with them. These are all the most cheerful colors, there is no black, no white here. Everything is colorful, even the people.

When parting with the neighborhood, Argentinians happily continue to tell their favorite joke to every foreigner: "Mexicans came from the Mayans, Peruvians from the Incas, and we from the ships."