Rare Books
"I spent my childhood summers at my father's farm outside Buenos Aires ... My parents sold that farm in 1981, and it would be a long time until I returned to the countryside. When I did, it was to their new smaller farm to the south of Buenos Aires, and I was older, just back from a year studying photography in New York. One day my father took me along for a short drive to have someone fix his broken windmill pump. We drove a few kilometers and slowed down near a group of trees. A pack of wild-looking dogs rushed out, jumping and scratching at the pick-up truck doors, and a round woman opened a flimsy wire gate and walked towards us, both smiling and shrieking at the dogs to shut up. It was Juana. I spent the next few years visiting Juana constantly, photographing her animals and listening to her tales of days long gone, her musings on life and on the Bible ...There were always many visitors at Juana's... The most regular visitors were her grown daughters Pachi and Chica ...They'd come over with their youngest daughters Belinda and Guillermina ... Beli and Guille were always running, climbing, chasing chickens and rabbits. Sometimes I'd take their picture just so they'd leave me alone and stop scaring the animals away, but mostly I would shoo them out of the frame. I was indifferent to them until the summer of 1999, when I found myself spending almost every day with them. They were nine and ten years old, and one day, instead of asking them to move aside, I let them stay"--From introduction.
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