Buenos Aires

Someone once said (several did, it is unimportant who said it first) that cities are books that should be read with your feet. Regarding Buenos Aires, this is completely true: to get to know this city, one must walk around and read it from head to toe. All the voices need to be heard, as well as the ones that are manifested through printed images and texts.

The book Buenos Aires has been growing over ten years in Diego Bianki’s travelogues. While its author insisted on getting lost in the city for excessively looking at the clouds or for not taking his eyes off the ground, he gradually gathered those papers (“city bookmarks”, according to the greguería) the wind moves at its will through the wide halls of an unfathomable library. If for an instant one of them catches his attention, he runs after it and puts it in his pocket.

Bianki has used hundreds of pieces of paper rescued from the rubbish to illustrate each of the twenty-seven letters that compose this alphabet: there are fruit labels, sweets’ wrappers, matchboxes, cardboard packaging, commercial leaflets, napkins, tablecloths, and all kinds of printed materials. Cows, rabbits, and penguins come out to greet the cheerful walkers who speed through a gallery of brief texts.