The Argentina Independent would like to invite talented writers to submit short stories, excerpts and poems in English, for the second edition of our short story competition. The contest is open to all writers who want to share their unique voice with Argentina’s English speaking community. Deadline for submissions is Friday 5th October.

We will announce the five finalists on 10th October, and readers will be invited vote to decide the winner, who will have their piece published on our homepage. All five finalists will have the chance to read their pieces at the BA Books Lover’s Night on Friday 26th October (details to follow shortly).

Contest Guidelines

1. All entries must be less than 1000 words. There is no minimum word count.

2. All entries must be submitted by Friday 5th October at midnight.

3. Please submit a Word or Text document, size 12 pt. font. Include your name, a title, and word count. Please proofread thoroughly.

4. Participation is limited to one submission per person.

5. The writing entered and all rights to it must be your own. In submitting your entry, you agree to The Argentina Independent’s non-exclusive use of your writing on our website, newsletter, and associated printed press. You maintain full copyright for your entry and, where used by The Argentina Independent, the writing will be will be credited to you as the author, with a link to your website or blog where applicable.

6. The winning entry will be published in our November edition and online.

SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO: [email protected]

Please title your email Writing Contest: [Your Name].

Lead image by Jeffrey James Pacres

Prize of a 'Micro D' lightweight, warn and fast-drying fleece by Patagonia

Congratulations and many thanks to everyone who participated in the Patagonia photography competition! We had many beautiful entries, but had to narrow it down to the top ten images. These stunning captures of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia have been uploaded to our Facebook page where you can vote for your favourites by liking the photos until the end of May when voting will be tallied.

The winner’s image will appear in our first print edition, due out in June. This competition has been generously sponsored by Patagonia Outdoor Clothing with a prize of a ‘Micro D’ lightweight, warm and fast-drying fleece, that works as either insulation or an outer layer – perfect for the cold months ahead! And, as an extra bonus, it is also environmentally friendly – made from 85% recycled fleece – Patagonia recycle used soda bottles, unusable second-hand quality fabrics and worn out garments into polyester fibres to produce many of their clothes.

The ten finalists will be invited to join our professional team of photographers in showing their photos at our next gallery night, due to take place in San Telmo mid-June.

A small cascade winds through the thick Patagonia woods just outside of El Bolsón, Rio Negro. (Photo: Brain Funk)

We are calling for entries for our new photography competition, with the winner’s image appearing in our first print edition, due out in June. Sponsored by Patagonia Outdoor Clothing, we are asking contestants to send us their best shot of Patagonia by 20th May.

Beatrice Murch, The Indy’s head of photography, will then select the ten best images and the final judgement will go over to you, our readers, to vote via facebook during a two-week period.

The ten finalists will be invited to join our professional team of photographers in showing their photos at our next gallery night, due to take place in San Telmo mid-June.

Photographs may be taken on any type of camera but must have been taken in Argentine or Chilean Patagonia.

Prize of a 'Micro D' lightweight, warn and fast-drying fleece by Patagonia

The prize, courtesy of Patagonia Outdoor Clothing, is a ‘Micro D’ lightweight, warm and fast-drying fleece, that works as either insulation or an outer layer – perfect for the cold months ahead! And, as an extra bonus, it is also environmentally friendly – made from 85% recycled fleece – Patagonia recycle used soda bottles, unusable second-hand quality fabrics and worn out garments into polyester fibres to produce many of their clothes.

Only one entry may be submitted per person and it must be accompanied by your full name and one line caption, giving background on the image – where and when it was taken, and what is being captured.

To enter, please email your photograph to [email protected] by 20th May.

Size your image to a maximum of 1024 pixels on the longest side before sending. The winner must be able to provide a high-resolution (300 dpi) version of the image for publication in print by 10th June.

For Peace of Mind:

The image entered and all rights to it must be your own. In submitting your photograph, you agree to The Argentina Independent’s non-exclusive use of your image on our website, newsletter and associated printed press.

You maintain full copyright to your photograph and, where used by The Argentina Independent, the photograph will be credited to you as the photographer, with a link to your online portfolio where applicable.

The Argentina Independent would like to invite talented writers in Buenos Aires to submit short stories, excerpts and poems in English. The contest is open to all writers who want to share their unique voice with the English speaking community in Buenos Aires. Deadline for submissions is Sunday 25th March at midnight.

We will announce and post the five finalists here on facebook on 1st April, and our fans will then be invited vote to decide the winner, who will have their piece published on our homepage. All five finalists will have the chance to read their pieces at the first BA Books Lover’s Night on 13th April (details to follow shortly). The night will include a book fair with books in English for sale or exchange, live readings and music.

Contest Guidelines

1. All entries must be less than 1000 words. There is no minimum word count.

2. All entries must be submitted by Sunday 25th March at midnight.

3. Please submit a Word or Text document, size 12 pt. font. Include your name, a title and word count. Please proofread thoroughly.

4. Participation is limited to one submission per person.

5. The writing entered and all rights to it must be your own. In submitting your entry, you agree to The Argentina Independent’s non-exclusive use of your writing on our website, newsletter and associated printed press. You maintain full copyright to your entry and, where used by The Argentina Independent, the writing will be will be credited to you as the author, with a link to your website or blog where applicable.

6. Prizes: To be announced.

SEND ALL SUBMISSIONS TO: charlie@argentinaindependent.com

Please title your email Writing Contest: [Your Name].

Winning team Ashkaba at the end of a long day of filming. (Photo: Alex King)

The Argentina Independent is proud to present ‘Un Amor Trunco’ by Ashkaba, who won Buenos Aires Film Rush, hosted by The Indy, on Saturday.

Film Rush was a challenge for film makers, giving each team just ten hours to come up with a three-minute short which included three elements: a newspaper, an arrival and a lost love. Those who made it then showed their finished products at a screening on Saturday night at Bar de La Tribu in Almagro.

Ashkaba took on the challenge along with 21 other teams, beating the other 17 who managed to complete the task, and won the audience’s vote.

The team was made up of Ivan Stoessel, Federico Pozzi, Pablo Verbeke, Guadalupe Aizaga, Martin Wilde and Martina Matzkin, and their final product, ‘Un Amor Trunco’, starred Veronica Intile and Juan Arena, with voice overs by Martina Matzkin and Ivan Stoessel.

To see the other videos that made it, visit The Argentina Independent’s You Tube channel.

Today Argentina kick off their campaign to become Copa América champions for the first time since 1993 against Bolivia in La Plata. It will also mark the coming home of the tournament, known until 1975 as the South American Championship, to Argentina 95 years after the inaugural competition was held in Buenos Aires. Then just four teams took part in games played in a single venue, this year’s Copa will see 12 sides battle it out in cities across the north of Argentina; Jujuy, Salta, San Juan, Córdoba, Santa Fe and Mendoza as well as La Plata, before the final to be held in the Estadio Monumental in Buenos Aires on 24 July.

The Copa América has an illustrious history, being the oldest continuously played for international football tournament, in which Argentina has played an integral part, winning the competition a joint-record 12 times along with Uruguay.

Origins

In 1916, to celebrate 100 years of Argentine independence, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) with the support of the Argentinian Ministry of Foreign Relations, held a tournament that was later to be considered the first South American Championship. Aside from Argentina, the other countries invited were neighbours Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. On 2 July, Uruguay beat Chile 4-0 in the tournaments inaugural match played in the Gimnasia y Esgrima stadium in Buenos Aires, setting them on their way to what would ultimate competition victory.

However, such was the impression made by the tournament that the Uruguayan football administrator, Héctor Rivadavia Gómez, who had been agitating for closer continental ties for several years, was moved, along with the help of his counterparts from Brazil, Argentina and Chile to found the South American Football Federation, known by its Spanish acronym CONMEBOL, who later at its first congress gave the tournament official status as the first South American Championship.

A year later the first CONMEBOL staged South American Championship was held in Montevideo and was again won by Uruguay. This time, the teams were playing for the Copa América, a handsome trophy costing 3,000 French Francs which remains in use to this day.

Rioplatense rivalry

The tournament in the 1920s was dominated by the two countries who would be at the forefront of not just South American, but world football for the next decade, Uruguay and Argentina.

In 1921 Argentina finally won the competition as hosts for the second time, winning all three of their games without conceding a goal. Much of the credit for this went their outstanding goalkeeper Américo Tesoriere, and top scorer, Newell’s Old Boys striker Julio Libonatti, who five years later would become the first Argentine to be transferred to Europe when he signed for Torino in Italy. After their final match against Uruguay, the players were joyously carried for several miles by fans from the Sportivo Barracas stadium to the Plaza de Mayo in the heart of Buenos Aires.

Argentina’s next victory in 1925, again as hosts, had a more hollow ring to it as only Paraguay and Brazil joined them in the tournament, with Chile and Uruguay – the newly crowned Olympic Champions – opting out (although this may have been as a result of the turbulent ‘friendly’ matches played the year before between Argentina and Uruguay which soured footballing relations between the two countries).

Each side played each other twice and a 2-2 draw with Brazil was enough to the clinch the cup. Argentina’s star was top-scorer, Manuel Seoane who was rather fortunate to be playing in the competition at all. He was a player with Independiente who at the time were playing in a breakaway league not affiliated to the Argentine FA (AFA) and therefore CONMEBOL, making him ineligible for selection. However, whilst serving a one year suspension in that league, he was loaned to minnows El Porvenir, who did play in the AFA’s league making him eligible after all.

With league splits behind it, Argentina were able to field a full strength team at the 1927 championship in Perú, which had the added bonus of qualification for the 1928 Olympic Games for the top two teams. They proceeded to dominate the tournament, thrashing Bolivia 7-1 and Perú 5-1, and seeing off reigning champions Uruguay 3-2 to win their third title, with starring roles for Seoane, Tesoriere and Ludovico Bidoglio.

In fact the most difficult part of the tournament for the Argentines was actually getting to Perú. They left by train from Mendoza, crossing the Andes before catching a boat from the Chilean port of Valparaiso to Callao and then making their way to Lima.

Uruguay emerged top dogs at the 1928 Olympics beating Argentina in the final, but la albiceleste gained their revenge the following year when the competition came back to Buenos Aires. After beating Perú and Paraguay, they sealed their fourth cup by beating Uruguay 2-0 in front of 60,000 fans in San Lorenzo’s Gasómetro stadium.

However, thanks to the haemorrhaging of its top players like Luis Monti, Raimundo Orsi and Enrique Guaita to the riches of Italy following the 1930 World Cup, it would be a further eight years before Argentina triumphed again in the South American Championship.

Played once more in Buenos Aires, including matches played under new-fangled floodlights, Argentina found themselves tied at the top of the table with Brazil after each team had played each other, forcing a play-off match between the two to decide the cup. After drawing 0-0 in normal time, the 17-year-old Vicente de la Mata became Argentine’s hero scoring twice to secure the trophy.

Golden Age

With the return of the Italian migrants and Argentine domestic football booming following the introduction of professionalism, Argentina’s national team reached its apogee in the 1940s under the stewardship of Guillermo Stábile, winning the competition in 1941, 1945, 1946 and 1947. Playing a swift passing game known as ‘la nuestra’, the team drew heavily on the famed River Plate club side dubbed ‘la máquina’ for it’s domination of the Argentine league during the same period. They included the biggest stars of the era; Juan Manuel Moreno, Adolfo Pedenera, Juan Carlos Muñoz, Félix Loustau and Ángel Labruna.

With no meaningful football being played elsewhere as Europe and Asia were consumed by total war, the South American Championship assumed much greater significance as the de facto World Cup, the winners being able to plausibly claim to be the best in the world.

The 1941 triumph in Santiago was memorable for a five-goal salvo by Tigre striker, Juan Marvezzi against hapless Ecuador.

Argentina 2011 Team (Photo: Alejandro Pagni / courtesy AFA)

Victory in 1945 was arguably even more impressive given the quality of the opposition players on show such as Obdulio Varela of Uruguay and the Brazilians; Zizinho, Ademir and Domingos da Guia. Nonetheless, none were able to tame six-goal joint top scorer Norberto Méndez who was ably assisted by the likes of Mario Boyé, René Pontoni and Rinaldo Martino as they thrashed Ecuador 4-0, Perú 4-2 and Colombia 9-1 en route to the title.

Home advantage again proved crucial in 1946 as Argentina cruised past all comers, winning all five games, scoring 17 goals and conceding just three, equalling Uruguay’s record of eight titles in the process.

Argentina’s third consecutive triumph in Ecuador saw the emergence of one of the greatest Argentine’s ever to play the game – Alfredo Di Stéfano. Debuting in the 7-0 thrashing of Bolivia, the young River Plate forward would go on to score six goals. Sadly, his talents would be lost to the Argentine cause as he went first to Millonarios de Bogotá following the 1948 players’ strike in Argentina, and then to Real Madrid where he earned near immortality, taking Spanish citizenship and playing for Spain instead.

Return to the Mainstream

The 1947 triumph would be Argentina’s last participation in the South American Championship for eight years. After the 1948 players’ strike many of the country’s top players followed Di Stéfano’s example and went to Colombia, depriving the national team of a generation of talent.

Keen to preserve notions of Argentine superiority, the regime of Juan Perón which permeated all levels of the game in Argentina, withdrew the national team from international competition (including the 1950 World Cup in neighbouring Brazil) lest they were beaten.

Fielding Independiente’s forward line of Ricardo Bonelli, Carlos José Cecconato , Osvaldo Cruz, Ernesto Grillo and Rodolfo MIcheli en bloc, Argentina made a winning return in 1955, the highlight of which was a 6-1 hammering of 1950 World Champions, Uruguay.

In Lima in 1957 Argentina’s team again reached the heights of the 1940s. Boasting a 20-year-old forward line of Humberto Maschio, Antonio Angelillo and Omar Sívori – nicknamed ‘los ángeles con caras sucias’ – ‘The Angels with Dirty Faces’ after the popular Hollywood movie of the time, Argentina simply swept aside all before them, winning the cup with a game to spare having already dispatched Colombia 8-2, Ecuador 3-0, Uruguay 4-0, Chile 6-2 and Brazil 3-0.

Hopes were high that Argentina would replicate their success at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, but these were dashed when Maschio, Angelillo and Sívori all transferred to Italy, Argentina ultimately being humbled by Czechoslovakia.

They regained a measure of self-respect at the 1959 tournament by overshadowing a Brazil side containing World Cup winners Pelé, Garrincha, Didi, Nilton Santos, Djalma Santos and Mario Zagallo to win the cup again on home soil, the last time for more than three decades.

Doldrums

The tournament fell into neglect during the 1960s and 70s only being held sporadically and on a home and away basis, as countries baulked at the costs of staging the competition in straightened times.

On the pitch Argentina were in a period of transition, using the championship as trials for more important World Cup campaigns rather than fielding their strongest available side and the team failed to prosper as lesser lights like Perú and Paraguay took the laurels.

Homesickness

In 1987 CONMEBOL tried to reinvigorate the tournament, by now officially known as the Copa América, by reverting to a single fixed venue to be rotated around the ten member nations every two years. They started with the 1987 competition in Argentina, played in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Córdoba.

As reigning World Champions, captained by the incomparable Diego Maradona, Argentina were red hot favourites on home turf. However, they looked lethargic, especially Maradona who was suffering from flu, and went out with barely a whimper to Uruguay in the semi-final.

Back-to-back wins

After Argentina had earned few friends in brawling their way to the 1990 World Cup Final, the task of restoring Argentina’s reputation fell to new coach, Alfio ‘Coco’ Basile at the 1991 Copa in Chile.

With Maradona unavailable following a drugs ban, Basile fielded a team of young unheralded players ably led by veteran defender, Oscar Ruggeri. However they soon gelled, with striker Gabriel Batistuta showing himself to be a superstar in the making scoring six goals, finishing top of Group A before beating Brazil 3-2 in a bruising final round encounter, which saw two players from each side sent off. They drew 0-0 with the hosts, and a 2-1 victory over Colombia was enough to give them their first Copa victory in 32 years.

On the back of a long unbeaten run, Argentina retained the title in Ecuador two years later as the tournament expanded to include two invited teams from North and Central America. Hero of the hour for Argentina this time was goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea who reprised his penalty saving heroics of the 1990 World Cup against Brazil in the quarter-final and Colombia in the semi-final. In the final it was again Batistuta who made the difference, scoring an 85^th minute winner to break Mexican hearts.

With the Copa América playing second fiddle to the concurrent marathon World Cup qualifying campaigns which began in the mid-1990s, Argentina again reverted to fielding experimental teams in the Copa with predictably poor results, failing to progress past the quarter-finals between 1995 and 2001 (when they withdrew for security reasons).

Brazilian heartbreak

In a bid to restore the relevancy of the Copa América CONMEBOL began the transition of the competition into a four yearly event in the year immediately following the World Cup.

The first tournament during this transition was in Perú in 2004, when under Marcelo Bielsa, Argentina thrilled their way to the final with exciting young talent like Javier Saviola, Andrés D’Alessandro and Carlos Tévez, as they scored 15 goals. In the decider they led Brazil 2-1 with just seconds to go on the clock, when Adriano scored a dramatic late equalizer. Demoralized, Argentina lost the resultant penalty shoot-out.

Three years later in Venezuela, Argentina once more blitzed their way to the final as 20-year-old Barcelona sensation, Lionel Messi, staged a one-man goal of the tournament competition. Well supported by Javier Mascherano, Maxi Rodríguez and Tévez amongst others, Argentina looked set to go all the way, but were once more thwarted by their nemesis Brazil in the final. An early own goal by Roberto Ayala set the scene as Brazil romped to a 3-0 win.  

History beckons Sergio Batista’s men, if Messi and Co can all find form together then Argentina can pull ahead of Uruguay in terms of all-time Copa victories. Over the next three weeks all will become clear.

It has been six months since Argentina dominated Mundial Scrabble XIV, the 14th Spanish Scrabble world championships in San José, Costa Rica. Argentina won the Nations Cup against strong teams from Venezuela and Spain, and Luis Picciochi, an Argentine, brought home the individual championship for the second year running. You may think this leaves space for complacency, but almost immediately competition begins in preparation for the 2011 Mundial XV.

It is 3pm on a drizzly Saturday afternoon and I am taken to a large back room of a library in Caballito, a residential neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. The sight of groups of old friends greeting and catching up is not an unusual sight anywhere. But, what is out of the ordinary, is that they are surrounded by 40 delicately positioned small tables, and accompanied by three youngsters running around setting up an industrial quantity of Scrabble boards. Empty Scrabble boxes are piled neatly at the end of the room.

It is an hour until the Torneo Mensual de Junio – June’s monthly tournament – begins. Each player has three matches against similarly skilled opponents. A majority are from Buenos Aires, but some travel twice a month from as far as Rosario. After all, at stake are three places at Mundial XV to be held in Mexico City in November 2011. The players who win most matches throughout the year take the spaces.

More players arrive and the atmosphere becomes boisterous.

I find a quiet table and sit down with Luis Picciochi. Luis is the current world champion, and has been for the last two years. He tells me of his preparations for Scrabble tournaments. “For two hours every day, I practice either by playing Scrabble or studying. I study both anagrams and a dictionary containing 4,000 important words for Scrabble – I wrote the dictionary myself.”

In the Picciochi household, Scrabble is a family affair. He plays regularly with his wife and daughter and he is the first to admit he isn’t always the winner. He has played Scrabble his whole life, but professionally since 2006. “I am passionate about Scrabble. It is the challenge of anagrams, of strategy against your opponent and the calculation of possibilities.” At any point during the game he remembers exactly which tiles remain in the bag.

The winner of the first Argentine championship in 1997 was Susana Hartman, and the popularity of the game has increased ever since. There are now 120 members of the La Asociación Argentina de Scrabble (AAS), and 80 of these today fill the room and find their allocated seats for the first round of games. Players join from a variety of backgrounds – AutoCAD designers, physics professors, IT consultants. Three are also regional presidents of MENSA.

Picciochi continues: “Winning and losing are not the same to me. I am very competitive, and I always want to win.”

The competitive and serious nature of the players can appear lost amongst all the chattering going on, but it rises to the surface immediately the 40 games begin. The talking is replaced by the rattle of Scrabble tiles in bags and it is only a minute before I hear “consultar!” – already a player is challenging an opponent’s word.

‘Ranchases’, ‘Latinare’, ‘Pluameare’ – these are words I see as I walk around the tables, and, given my level of Spanish, I would challenge every single one. ‘Asaeteado’ is from the verb meaning ‘to shoot arrows at’ and ‘mazmorra’ is ‘dungeon’. Hardly words from everyday usage.

In between games, Ariel Chiapella, a competitor, tells me of another aspect of preparation, centred on the website, ReDeLetra of the Federación Internacional de Scrabble en Español (FISE), the official international body of Spanish Scrabble. “We all practice during the week on the website against each other. There are around 300,000 socios [members] playing seven million games. We play against people from Bariloche, Córdoba and Rosario in Argentina, and many others from abroad.”

To the English-speaking world, the popularity of Spanish Scrabble may appear surprising. But, given there are a similar number of Spanish and English speakers in the world, it shouldn’t be seen as odd that the Spanish world championship started only six years after the English equivalent, in 1997. And there are more competitors – this year’s tournament will see 120 take part whereas the most recent English-language competition, held in Malaysia in 2009 and won by a Thai, had 108 competitors.

Of course, the games are slightly different. Due to their rarely being used, K, both W’s and one of the two V’s are removed from the Spanish version and replaced with CH, LL, RR and Ñ. It is usual for Spanish-language games to result in higher scores.

According to Horatio Moavro, controller of the AAS, this is due to a number of factors. “Firstly, there are 700,000 words in the Spanish language, compared to just 400,000 in English. Secondly, there are more seven-letter words in Spanish, making it easier to form a Bingo.” (A ‘Bingo’, or a ‘Scrabble’, is where a player uses all seven tiles and thus scores a bonus 50 points that turn.) In addition, there are many more shorter, two- and three-letter words in Spanish. It shows in the scores – the highest today being 641.

Other players are less competitive, and are keen to tell me about the social aspect. “Its a good chance to meet all my old friends and to meet new people.” During the week are more informal matches and teaching sessions, allowing the improving players to learn from those ranked higher.

This culture of continual learning and practice by those at all levels allows Argentine Scrabble to flourish. The country continues to dominate the southern cone region. This weekend is the Austral tournament to be held in Montevideo. Of the 65 players, 40 will be from Argentina, one from Paraguay, two from Chile and the rest from Uruguay. And from this two-day tournament, two players will qualify for Mundial XV.

But, even all this training and practice is not enough when luck is not on your side. One player at the end confided: “She had better letters. It happens.”

Picciochi won all three of his games, but, as scores are aggregated with results from a meeting two weeks previously, he is ranked in sixth position. He has determined competition, and will have his work cut out to defend his title in Mexico City this November.

World Press Photo is an independent, non-profit organisation founded in Amsterdam in 1955. Every year since then a travelling exhibition of its photos has toured the world, visited annually by over two million people in 45 countries. The images selected are the winners of the prestigious competition run by the organisation, which aims to promote high standards in professional photojournalism. The exhibition is currently in its Buenos Aires residence, the Centro Cultural Borges, until 4th October.

The photos on show are presented as singles or in series, roughly grouped into categories such as spot news, general news, people in the news, sports action, sports features, daily life, stories, portraits, contemporary issues, arts and entertainment and nature. Each exhibit is accompanied by an explanatory panel in both English and Spanish, listing the photojournalist, the news agency for which they work, the prize they won and the relevant background information.

The exhibition is not for the faint-hearted. Many photos feature distressing scenes from international news stories, such as the Russia-Georgia conflict or the Sichuan earthquake. It requires a certain degree of morbid fascination to stomach images of floating corpses, bleeding hands or a military boot resting on the face of a Kenyan man contorted with fear. This makes the photos all the more testament to the courage of the prize-winning photojournalists, who risk their own lives for the perfect shot.

The photos vary in tone, however. The arts and entertainment category ranges from the traditional tourism of an afternoon on a Baltic beach to its altogether more sinister counterpart at Birkenau concentration camp. Equally the contemporary issues pictured include persecuted Tanzanian albinos, transsexual prostitutes in Honduras, a victim of the rampant violence against women in Guatemala and homelessness in Mexico. These are provocative images, unsettling in their intrusion into a foreign other’s life. They offer a glimpse into another world courtesy of an intrepid lens.

Photo by Anthony Suau

Police officer making sure former owners of a foreclosed house are gone

The final shot in the exhibition is the winning photo, a black and white image by North American Anthony Suau for Time magazine. It depicts a police officer clutching a handgun as he wades through the debris of an abandoned house in Cleveland. The title is ‘US economy in crisis’, taking the vandalised house following eviction as emblematic of the country’s economic disarray which has dominated both national and international news over the course of the past year. Describing his experience shadowing Detective Robert Kale, Suau declared that “you never really knew what you would find…there was just this range of emotions which was as broad as you can imagine.”

They are powerful images which are on show, and some of the photos you may even recognise. I recall a Reuters image by Gleb Caranich of the Georgian war graced the cover of a British newspaper last summer. The photos in the exhibition provide a beguiling summary of the issues which sold papers in 2008. In some their merit stems from careful execution, testifying to a skillful photojournalist’s understanding of photographic technique and composition. Others impress with an incredible event immortalised on film, the successful result of a chance sighting and a camera to hand.

Above all, the exhibition’s charm derives from the many close-ups of individuals in remarkable situations. They humanise the headlines and translate facts into the emotive language of image. At times stark, at times moving, the World Press Photography exhibition is a fresh angle from which to view the life and times of the world we live in.

Photo by Carlos Cazalis

Homeless sleeping in Mexico City outside the exclusive Jockey Club

Photo by Luis Vasconcelos

Indigenous Honduran woman resisting the forceful eviction of her land

Photo by Carlos F Gutierrez

Chaitin’s volcanic eruption in Chile ignited a “Dirty Thunderstorm”

The World Press Photography exhibition is at the Centre Cultural Borges, Viamonte esq. San Martin until 4th October. Entry is $15. See http://www.ccborges.org.ar for more information.