Thomas Locke Hobbs

Hi! Thanks for visiting. I'm an American photographer living in Buenos Aires. These are photos from the blog I kept on my site from 2003 to 2009. I now have redesigned the home page to just show a portfolio of my current work. I also blog at BuenosAiresPhotographer.com where I post my baires snapshots.

Memorial da America Latina

You don´t have to go to Brasilia to experience Oscar Niemeyer´s wacky architecture. Right near the center of São Paulo is his Memorial da America Latina. It was opened in 1989, despite it´s rather 60´s Jetson´s look. Niemeyer has never really altered his style. The centerpiece of the memorial is a vast, shade-less, sunbaked, concrete plaza--perhaps not the best feature in a tropical city. The project strikes me as one of those self-congratulatory public projects that don´t do very much good. The quote at the bottom of the bleeding hand is from the then-governor of São Paulo state.

The site is located next to one of the major transit points in São Paulo; Barra Funda, where the train, subway and multiple bus lines converge. A shopping mall would´ve been a better contribution to the urban fabric. Instead Paulistas have a vast, fenced-in, ceremonial dead-zone in the heart of the city. I suppose the models at least looked cool.

The Official website. Neimeyer´s website, showing a number of his later projects.

Labels: brasil

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Hi. I'm a 33 year-old American currently living in Buenos Aires. Before that I lived in California, Sao Paulo and New York and if you browse through the archives below you can see photos of all those places. Currently I'm posting most of my pictures on BuenosAiresPhotographer.com. I also have an old geocities page with some outdated information but also more photos of Buenos Aires, friends and my 9/11 pictures.