Portraits of Places: Notes on Horacio Coppola’s Photography and Short Urban Films

Abstract

Beginning in the late twenties and more specifically during the thirties – commissioned by the city of Buenos Aires on the occasion of the city's fourth centennial celebrations – Horacio Coppola created a way of looking at Buenos Aires that continues to be influential to this day. This article focuses on the photographic production that constituted that vision in parallel with the short film Así nació el Obelisco (this is How the Obelisk was Born) which Coppola shot on his own accord while working on the commission in 1936. With the aim of achieving a more thorough understanding of his perspective and aesthetic choices as a creator, we will analyze an early, little-known article he wrote for Clave de Sol (1931) magazine in which he discusses issues regarding photography and film, cinematographic time and documentary film. As an urban photographer and filmmaker, this study would not be complete without also examining the short films he produced featuring the Pont des Arts pier in Paris (1934) and Hampstead Heath in London (1935). In these pieces, Coppola reveals the ties that exist between places and the people who inhabit and use them, a key to modern urban life, and an insight essential to the modern point of view from which he would later construct such powerful imagery of Buenos Aires.