Silver Silvia

Another person who is of great help to make us find 8 persons in Buenos Aires who show what nobody has seen is Ms. Silvia Rottenberg. She has a company called NIBA, Nederlands Instituut Buenos Aires, that is involved in organizing and managing activities between the Netherlands and Argentina in the field of arts and science. Yesterday Ms. Rottenberg was not as fortunate as she usually is. She was robbed of her backpack in which money and worst of all, her laptop computer. It happened in a cafetaria near the Embassy of the Netherlands. These kinds of events are small tragedies: especially the loss of the computer and all the information it is carrying. But today Silvia Rottenberg was happy as always: nothing is going to stop her.

Paula prima donna

Often we get the question how we manage to find persons in the countries we visit who show what nobody has seen. The answer is complex as the procedure has many sides and details.
But one thing is easy to explain. In each city we work with local producers and these are of essential value. They have and make the contacts, know how to go to the different corners of the city and assist in translation.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, we work with a woman called Paula Gordillo as the local producer. We are most impressed by her. Very efficient, always on time, full of initiative, with many contacts and a great knowledge of the city.
We would be unable to have the results we are getting without Ms. Gordillo.
Besides an excellent producer, she is also a warm and lovely person. For us she is more than a producer: she is our friend.

Shoot the shocking monkey

He is a guy here in Argentina who is the prototype of the macho as they must be to carry that label with pride. Always cool, in control, the strongest, superior, ready to sperm and rock and roll.
He came to our appointment two hours late, sinking in a chair and watching like, what is the problem here? Not apologizing and not explaining anything. Like we should be happy, privileged, proud and impressed he showed up at all.
This is how we like guys. We don’t see them but they have balls for sure.

He came up with a story that he was able to show something the world had never seen. Pushed he admitted it was his toe. When he was a boy something had dropped on it and now it was deformed. In his opinion it looked so awful he always keeps his socks on when he is making love to his girlfriend.
A rather peculiar story, is it not?
We asked him to take off his shoe and sock and at first he refused. We wanted to see his naked foot for ourselves. We insisted and as we have some machismo in our repertoire as well, this force made him give in. He took off his shoe and then his sock and what did we see? A rather normal toe. Nothing special. Even a photo model would have not much of a problem parading on the catwalk with a toe like his.
Yes, Mr. Macho Argentina had been kidding us. With a nonsense toe.
We pretended to have lost any interest in him and expressed some irritation for having to wait two hours to be confronted by a rather normal toe.
Somehow we knew that our dissatisfaction with him would open the way for a revelation he obviously was prepared to do. A guy like him is not coming to an appointment for “What the world has never seen” if there is not something real serious to share.
The honor goes to junior producer Paula Gordillo. She had a way with him that eventually made him break. And he told us an amazing secret he is carefully keeping in his life. And for good reasons. The next day we had the shooting with this man and it involved a gun. Nobody was hurt and the pictures and his story are spectacular.

                                                                     © Sven Gerrets

Desperation drowned in booze

We were getting pretty desperate… Already 9 days in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and only 2 persons found who showed what even we ourselves to our great surprise never saw. But we want to find at least a total of 8 Argentinians to give them the best share in the upcoming book. In spite of the many appointments, the many contacts, phone calls, e-mails, the local smoke signals and drum beating, somehow it was not working in our favor. If you want to feel real nervous, perform “What the world has never seen” in Argentina. Very expensive to go to, very expensive to live in Buenos Aires, very warm and friendly people but in 9 days only 2 results.

We are experiencing elation this evening showered with an excellent super light vegetarian meal cooked by producer Sven Gerrets accompanied by Argentinian yellow beer and red wine.
Because today we found the third person and documented him.
It may sound teasing and repetitive, but we can’t put it in a different way: again it was most extraordinary what this person had to tell. Beyond anything that can be cooked in the imagination. We did the shooting in the Las Herras park and because we are in a good flow, magic shared once more the creation of the image and added this extra touch that came beyond any control received as a gift of the Gods that made the visual result more than simply the weather forecast. You see, you read and you feel the thunder.

                                                                                              © Sven Gerrets

There are millions but where is the one?

There are millions of people living in Buenos Aires and producer Sven Gerrets and junior producer Paula Gordillo are watching them. Who has a story to tell ?? Who has a secret to share? Who can show what nobody has seen?
The crowd is moving as they do every day.

While being watched by two experts who know how to find, how to plan and how to organize like the best there are.

Sleepless nights

Some contacts we made in Argentina are not in Buenos Aires. Therefore we travelled today by train to a group of persons that live in a house in a nearby town.

We talked with them in the sunshine drinking Mate.

And we didn’t need to tell much. One man had a look in his eyes that we only had to ask when we could do the shooting for “What the world has never seen”. He said: “Yes, my girlfriend and me, we have been talking about it and we can show something”.
They are extraordinary beautiful people and in a few days we will meet them again to hear their story and see what they will show. If there are going to be sleepless nights, it is caused by heavy curiosity.

A new candidate

In an exotic part of Buenos Aires is an old hotel called the Chillhouse that could serve to live the book “100 years of solitude” of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Rooms are € 35 a night and that includes the option to have the love affair of your life on the century old beds in the colonial rooms or to drink there yourself into oblivion when lacking the love of your life.
It is one of the two in the Chillhouse so I went to the roof of this intriguing hotel where was a party for the Dutch photographer Mark van der Aa who is going to leave Buenos Aires after many years to settle with a plastic surgeon in Mexico City.

                                                                          © Sven Gerrets

 

Argentinian people when they meet they kiss on the left cheek and this also is performed when two guys meet. It is something to get used to because my lips don’t know an unshaven cheek and this is therefore confusing. Best to kiss the gaucho with the eyes open. To remain in a good mental health.

An Argentinian party is burning meat. There is a barbecue where they grill steaks and sausages which they eat on white bread with Unilever tomato ketchup.
There is beer and wine and an Argentinian hard liquor with ice and lemon. But pot as well.

A party on a roof top with drinks and food and beautiful people and children while the sun slowly goes down and it is warm that comes in the heart as well, life is at its best during those moments of being close to heaven.

The friendly people say, why are you in Buenos Aires, Miguel?
And they hear the story of the project “What the world has never seen” and it might be the pot, it might be the booze, but they say, what the hell is that all about? To sink in contemplation because of course they start reflecting if they have a secret themselves maybe.
The friendly people say, what are the secrets you have heard already? What do people say? And they get the only adequate answer possible: what would you tell as a secret?

Some hours later a taxi races through the rough streets of Buenos Aires and I am in there with a woman and her small poodle called Felix. And she says, we must meet again.
Her story will open the freezer.

Gambini’s gambit

Hugo Gambini is a famous Argentinian author who wrote, among others, the biography of Che Guevara and the “Historia del Peronismo”.
A friend introduced us to Mr. Gambini and yesterday we had a cup of tea with him in a fancy cafeteria.

Mr. Gambini, junior producer Paula Gordillo and Michel Szulc Krzyzanowski.

                                                                   © Sven Gerrets

We believed that maybe he had knowledge of things the world has never seen. At the age of 77, Mr. Gambini is now writing his memoirs and according to him, everything that happened in his life will be in this book. He is not hiding anything. Therefore he considers himself a man who has no secrets and cannot show, as a  consequence of this attitude, something the world has not seen. He claims he simply shows everything.
That sounds intriguing, but is it really true? Too many people we meet claim they have no secrets and have nothing the world hasn’t seen. They say, we are an open book! But when the sun sets, the wine downs, the confidence grows, the intimacy intensifies, often to their own surprise, they discover they actually do have a secret. They in fact are able to show what the world has not seen.
This is also how it went with Mr. Gambini. Eventually he told a story about his life, something that is happening now in his situation, that is definitely not going to be published in his memoirs. A dreadful, painful and shocking story and we felt very sorry for Mr. Gambini. Sometimes it is good the world doesn’t see everything…

That makes two

Yesterday with Silvia Rottenberg, from NIBA (Nederlands Instituut in Buenos Aires) a day of trying to find a person that show what nobody has seen.
Faced with a city having almost 3 million people, it is a gigantic challenge to find that particular person who can tell a story or show something the other 2.999.999 and the rest of the world population has never seen.

 

                                                                        Silvia Rottenberg from NIBA

We met a psychologist who is involved in treating veterans of the Guerra de las Malvinas, also known as the 1982 Falklands war.
He told that the amount of Argentinean soldiers that died in that war (649) was lower than the amount of veterans who committed suicide after the war. This was mainly because they felt they lost the war, which they did: they surrendered. Hence, back home they were not considered heroes and were left alone with their often horrific war experiences.
But nowadays, psychologists care for these veterans and we were offered to come with the new friend to meet in a home for veterans some of the old soldiers. The psychologist was convinced we would hear stories from these soldiers the world had never heard of. We politely declined the offer. We believe the world knows those stories too well and nothing is unique about it.

Later we met a young man on the corner of a popular cafeteria. Hyperactive, hyper intelligent, hyper simpatico: a kind of guy we love.
It didn’t take long to become close to him and soon we told most intimate stories about our lives while the heavy Buenos Aires traffic racing around our corner.
Until the man told something about his life that flabbergasted Silvia Rottenberg and the photographer in an unprecedented way. He told something that made us feel so warm towards him and at one point, made us laugh so much, tears rolled down our cheeks.
We went to his apartment where was the successful shooting.

 

                                                                      © Silvia Rottenberg
Now we have two persons in Buenos Aires who  show what nobody has seen: target is a total of 8.

Inviting magic

It is a most unique experience to land in a metropole and focus on finding 8 persons that can show what nobody has seen. What are the techniques and strategies? How to tackle this challenge in a successful way? By now we could write an instruction manual about the different techniques we apply that have been resulting in amazing discoveries of intriguing secrets.

Let us reveal one of the techniques we use. It is a technique to remain sharp, highly observing, deeply aware and on a high level of consciousness.
In the plane to Argentina we selected one particular person. A young woman with a face not easy to forget. We approached her and asked her if she was Argentinian and living in Buenos Aires. She was and did. We chitchatted with her a little at 8 kilometers up in the sky to make us remember her. Now the producer and the photographer have the agreement that when we walk the streets of Buenos Aires, sit in cafeterias and coffee shops, pay high attention to possibly spot this woman from the plane. It would be magic and an extraordinary coincidence not likely top happen. But that is not the point. It is a simple exercise to remain on high alert very necessary to find persons that can show what nobody has seen.
Now, you may ask, if Jupiter aligns with Mars and you magically happen to meet this woman, what are you going to do?
This issue has been discussed by the team and what we will do is get on the internet right away, go to the website of Euroflorist and send roses to our girl-friends in Holland.