On the road

I came across this book the other day by Pablo Leon de la Barra, who writes this really good blog. It's a photographic travel diary of a trip to his native South America, an exploration of the cities he visited and a reflection of place and community. The book's title, 'Useless Landscape', perhaps gives us a clue as to the juxtapositions he is making, focusing often on empty places that have fallen into disrepair or in-between peripheral parts of the cities that have been inhabited by people. There is something quite melancholic but also optimistic about this collection of photographs, one that looks affectionately at an area of the world where extremes of lifestyles sit side by side, a place where the peeling paint of abandoned buildings is shadowed by the presence of towering concrete skyscrapers, where the locals set up their carts for trade along empty highways. More than anything it makes me want to travel...