Before the Park Filled

I knew this park well from my business trips to Buenos Aires.

Plaza San Martín was one of the places I liked to return to when I wanted to walk, find a little peace, and remember.

That morning, I went early because I wanted the park as empty as possible.

The stairs lead upward into the park, and beyond it the city continues toward the area of Buenos Aires known as Microcentro. The buildings surrounding the park were always part of the experience for me. This quiet green space exists in the middle of a very active city.

The morning itself was gray and gloomy.

When I returned to the photograph years later, I did not want to turn that morning into something prettier than it had been. I brightened the stairs slightly so that they would lead into the photograph, opened some of the trees and lampposts, added definition to the architecture, and darkened the sky enough to preserve the atmosphere I remembered.

There is another detail in the photograph that is easy to overlook.

Just below the tree line, small birds are scattered across the grass.

I had gone there hoping to photograph the park without people.

It was quiet.

But it was never truly empty.

Before the Park Filled presents Plaza San Martín as both an urban landscape and a deliberately sought space of temporary solitude.

The staircase enters prominently from the lower right and carries the viewer upward into the park. Its adjacent retaining wall creates a second diagonal across the foreground, while a sequence of lampposts continues the visual movement through the landscape.

At left, the surrounding architecture establishes the dense urban environment against which the open lawn and mature trees are experienced.

The absence of people is not incidental. Colón deliberately visited the park early in the morning because he wanted to photograph it before normal pedestrian activity occupied the space.

Small birds scattered across the upper lawn complicate that emptiness without disturbing it. Their scale makes them easy to overlook at ordinary viewing size, rewarding closer examination rather than demanding immediate attention.

The finished edit preserves the subdued character of the overcast morning. Local adjustments increase visibility in the staircase, trees, and lampposts while the darker sky retains the gloomy conditions remembered by the photographer.

I returned to Plaza San Martín many times when I traveled to Buenos Aires.

It was not simply another place in the city for me.

I could walk there and let the noise of everything else recede for a while.

I could think.

I could remember.

On this particular morning, I wanted to experience the park before other people arrived, so I went early.

Looking at the photograph now, I realize that what I called empty was really something more specific.

I wanted the absence of people.

The park itself was full of other things.

Trees.

Grass.

The repeating lamps.

The architecture surrounding it.

And, almost hidden in the photograph, the small birds scattered beneath the tree line.

There are also things I remember that the photograph does not show.

Below and to the left of this frame is the memorial to the Argentine soldiers who died in the Falklands/Malvinas War. Nearby buildings and places that formed part of my experience of this area are hidden behind the trees or outside the frame.

The photograph preserves what was in front of the camera.

My memory preserves what surrounded it.

Perhaps that is one reason I kept returning here.

It gave me room for both.

Before the Park Filled was photographed in Plaza General San Martín in the Retiro district of Buenos Aires on August 9, 2015.

Colón frequently visited the park during business trips to Buenos Aires and remembers it as a place where he could walk, find quiet, and reflect.

The photographer deliberately arrived early in the morning because he wanted to photograph the park with as few people as possible. The relative absence of pedestrians is therefore part of the original photographic intent rather than a meaning assigned retrospectively.

Small birds are visible across the upper lawn immediately below the tree line. Their presence is subtle at normal viewing size and was intentionally left understated in the final edit.

Outside the lower-left boundary of the photograph lies the Cenotaph to the Fallen in the Malvinas/Falklands War, situated at the foot of Plaza San Martín's slope. The memorial is part of the photographer's remembered geography of the scene but is not visible within the photograph itself.

Before the Park Filled is related to A Place to Remember (FCS-PH-0134), photographed in the same park on the same date. Together the works document different relationships with a place Colón repeatedly sought during his stays in Buenos Aires.