Beto Ruiz Alonso - Headlines
Last month, the president of Argentina (where I live) passed a bill to expropriate YPF, the country’s biggest oil and gas company.
It was a media scandal and it’s been all over the news so I thought it would be perfect for this assignment.
The move has been called a “theft” by the Wall Street Journal and has hurt diplomatic relations with Spain (the private company that had control over the YPF, Repsol, is Spanish.) It’s hard to explain in a few paragraphs the impact of this development in a country that’s effectively divided (President Kirchner won her second term with 54% of the vote) and it’s even harder to show it in a photograph but overall, I like the way it turned out.
I went to the luxurious barrio of Puerto Madero, where the YPF tower is located and took this picture. A stunning work of architecture; it projects anything but humility. The tower stands alone beneath a darkening sky. A storm is coming alright.
Beto Ruiz Alonso - Oldest School
I bought my first SLR when I was 19 years old. It was a Pentax K1000 and I spent every cent of my savings on it. I remember holding it for the first time and thinking “you just spent everything you had on this, better make something out of it”.
The next morning I was up early and saw this amazing sunrise, the sky was full of small clouds and it looked epic (I’m bummed that I can’t find that shot now, but this was the 90’s after all, it’s been a while).
That was the first photo I took with the Pentax, and the beginning of me taking photography seriously. I was in San Francisco last month and went up to Treasure Island, where I found this sky. It’s not a sunrise but it has that same larger than life feeling, like an announcement of great things to come (and it also showcases one of my favorite cities in the world).
