According to ancient Greek philosopher Plato, a goodhearted youngster will be naive and confused when dealing with the evil in other people since the youngster doesn't understand how or why people can act in ways that are hurtful or harmful. In other words, such a youngster projects his or her goodness onto others – seeing others as good people wanting to do good. This description fits Nicolasito Almanza, a young photographer sent to La Plata on a mission by a book publisher to capture many photos of the thriving Argentine city located thirty-six miles south of Buenos Aires.
Argentine author Adolfo Bioy Casares wrote The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata in 1985 when age seventy-one, the last of his novels translated into English. Included on his list of translated novels are The Invention of Morel, A Plan for Escape, The Dream of Heroes, Diary of the War of the Pig and Asleep in the Sun. It is also worth noting Mr. Casares worked in close collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges and was the husband of the internationally renowned author Silvina Ocampo.
The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata clicks along briskly, its sixty-three short, crisp chapters compressed in less than one hundred seventy pages. Each chapter functions as a quick photo snap and it is on to the next scene or location.
However, all is not light and camera angles as an element of menace and foreboding injects itself into the tale right from the first pages - Almanza connects with a family also recently arrived in La Plata, old Juan Lombardo and his two attractive, sexually alluring daughters, Griselda and Julia.
No sooner does Almanza join the family at their boarding house than Juan Lombardo takes ill and is in desperate need of a blood transfusion from the young photographer. Once recovered enough to receive visitors in his hospital room, Lombardo confides in Almanza, tells of the bitter dispute with his long lost son Ventura. But now life has rewarded him with a new son, a son who has saved his life with his own blood.
“Outsiders should be careful.” So warns Mr. Gruter, an old man with ruffled hair and an anxious expression who runs the photo laboratory. Also, Almanza’s friend Mascardi, a police investigator, speaks of new kind of foul play where a family establish relationships with a victim in order to perpetrate a swindle or crime. There’s even mention that the entire Lombardo family is the face of the devil.
I mention the above to highlight how Almanza’s adventure in La Plata, from boarding house to boarding house, from café to restaurant, from park to monument, from museum and cathedral, takes on the atmosphere of a series of unsettling dreams one might have while wrestling through a bad night in a lumpy bed.
Yet even a bad dream can have its high points - Almanza gets to have luscious sex first with Griselda and then with Julia. Why not? The young photographer says he has always been lucky. Perhaps luck is understatement – nearly every woman he comes across would like to have intimate relations, sexual or otherwise, with this handsome young visitor.
Evil does indeed appear to be afoot but there is hope our youthful photographer will not be snared in its trap. “I may yet be forced,” he said to himself, repressing a smile, “to admit that all those who have been warning me against the Lombardo family are not so far from the truth. But with all this, really, what can they blame Griselda for? Nothing. And Julia, even less.”
Alas, Almanza must endure days on a strict diet since the check he is awaiting from the book publisher has yet to arrive in the mail. Perhaps his lack of food accounts for certain hallucinations and dream sequences, visions adding yet again another lens through which our hero experiences the peoples and happenings in La Plata.
Quite a turn since all the mirrors and a set of stained-glass windows Almanza repeatedly encounters appear to take on special symbolic meaning. And yet there is one final twist – Julia hands Almanza a kaleidoscope. Did I say each chapter functions as a quick photo shoot? Maybe an equally valid image would be each chapter serves as yet again another rotation of a kaleidoscope.
And to top it off, Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata asks us ultimately to consider what it means for a man of good intentions to arrives in a new city and deal with others who might not have equally good intentions. Is it best for such a man to continually be on guard? If so, what is lost – spontaneity, the possibility of friendship, of love? Questions to keep in mind while reading this engaging, charming short novel.
Almanza spends an unforgettable afternoon with Julia taking photos in one of the parks in La Plata
Almanza could hardly believe the height of the Cathedral in La Plata
This La Plata museum makes for a number of stunning photos
Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1914-1999
"The old man explained that only in the laboratory could one do justice to the incomparable light of La Plata, to the subtle mist which on certain afternoons envelops the buildings and endows them with a mysterious charm, like the halo on saints." - Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata
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