children playing in a fronton in the fishing town of Getaria, on the Basque coast
I’ve just put dozens of images on Flickr, specifically of people we encountered during our two weeks in Spain. Most of them are complete strangers, but Barry shows up regularly. It doesn’t surprise me that there is a disproportionate number of attractive men. There’s also one dog patiently waiting for its young master. The pictures appear chronologically, and the series begins in Madrid, moves north to Segovia and several small towns in Castille-Leon, La Rioja and Navarra, goes on to Pamplona and some smaller towns in Basque country, including Gueteria on the Costa Vasca, continues through Aragon, including Zaragoza, and ends in Barcelona.
Some of these pictures are beautiful, some cute, some funny and some revealing. The remainder (in fact all of them) are at least individual small documents.
Over the next few days or more I expect to be tagging and titling them, and I’ll also be adding other shots (the people-less ones), and some will appear on this site as well.
Author: jameswagner
we’re back, but it still looks pretty dreadful around here
like a bad penny
I cannot hide it any longer: We arrived back from Spain Wednesday afternoon. Our luggage, having decided to extend the holiday for another day, arrived at our door 24 hours later, sadder but a little wiser. Next time there will be no dawn check-ins at a remote airport for a connection to a Transatlantic flight.
I have tons of images from our trip to Spain which I’d like to put up on this site. I’m going to keep putting more up until I get distracted by the next new thing.
Unfortunately I really am very easily diverted. Witness my delight in one of today’s biggest news stories and my failure to resist looking back almost four years to three of the entries on this site which dealt with Paul Wolfowitz – in one of his earlier incarnations. Too bad he’s never gotten fired for his real failures and crimes: total personal incompetence and state murder on an international scale.
If you can still stand to read about the man, see this, my September 21, 2003 post and both this and this post each filed two days later, concerning Wolfowitz’s appearance at The New School.
[yucky image, but perhaps also an homage to Deborah Kass, from trueblueliberal]
sleeping dog left lying in Barceloneta
untitled (dog nap) 2007
I found this shaggy little guy asleep in the middle of Placa Barceloneta Tuesday afternoon.
another Barcelona
I’ve always wanted to inhabit this glorious utopian folly, so it was way up near the top of my list during our visit to Barcelona. In the end, since the platform occupied by the 1985 recreation of Mies van der Rohe’s 1929 Barcelona Pavilion was closed for a corporate reception when we approached it early in the afternoon on Tuesday, we had to go back a second time in order to actually experience the space.
I see it as a garden folly, maybe surrounded by a vineyard, and now I really covet it. Except that there wouldn’t be much wall space for art, I’d even live permanently (and sparely) in the confines of the architect’s detached structure at the end of the larger pool if there were books, music and food, and if I could share the beauty of these magnificent planes with friends and others. I can’t understand why none of the many people today who could afford to commission such a thing and live with it [seem to] have actually done so.
The second view here is taken from one end of that pool, looking at the structure I referred to, now being used as a museum shop. Barry can be seen in the distance, in a green shirt, sitting on the long Roman Travertine bench. The thick vertical line just right of the center of the picture is the leading edge of a high wall, of the same material, which extends all the way to the shop.
The first image above and these last two show other details of these austere, woven spaces and their materials. Those include, prominently, chromium steel, glass, water, river stones, green marble, golden Onyx, light and air.
two streets in Barcelona
untitled (skateboarder) 2007
untitled (laundry) 2007
These two shots were taken the same day, the first in El Raval, a neighborhood of Barcelona’s Ciutat Vella, near the historic center of the city, the second in Barceloneta, a planned 18th-century barrio barely a stone’s throw from the sea.
Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia
untitled (gilt holes) 2007
This is a large detail of the arcaded ceiling of the nave of Gaudi’s extraordinary Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The backlit holes, haloed with gilt rays perhaps 60 meters above the floor, seem to suggest openings in the heavens, even to an unbeliever like me.
AVIS Preferred
nice beltline
It took us at least 45 minutes to turn over the keys to our rental car here in Barcelona yesterday, but there was also this pleasant distraction at the counter immediately ahead of us.
He and his friend appeared to be Italian.
ancient Spanish light
untitled (flames) 2007
Biggest votive candles ever!
These thick tapers (measuring approximately one inch in diameter) were burning inside the enormous Renaisance/Baroque interior of Zaragosta’s Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar when we visited the church on Saturday.
three beautiful women in a Plaza, Castilla y Leon
untitled (walking sticks) 2007
Spaniards are almost always beautiful, but the older men and women have a kind of grace not found in youth, even the youth of Iberia. Not incidentally, they also dress much better than most of the kids and grandkids.
These three friends were sitting under the portico of a the Plaza Mayor in El Burgo de Osma last Wednesday afternoon.
somewhere in the Spanish Pyrenees, near the French border
untitled (roots) 2007
We’re having some difficulty getting a decent internet connection, so I haven’t been able to upload any of images I would like to have shown here in the last few days. This one was captured yesterday afternoon while we drove through a cloud on our way to the French border. Why France? I suppose because it was there. Today we drove along the coast west of Donostia/San Sebastián. Wow.