This project explores transient traditions and adaptation to a modern, globalised world. This blurb book is part of an installation for Chelin's final show, MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. Chelin uses new technologies and historical printing methods to create a unique cyanotype print toned with yerba-mate, the Argentine national beverage. A short film depicting the toning stage, voiced-over by the Gaucho’s rendition of a poem. And an original hand-crafted book that intertwines poetic tradition, daily anecdotes and journalistic notes to portray the new tendencies in Argentine rural practices (this is the Blurb version).
Gauchos have roamed the Argentine pampas for centuries. Brave and patriotic, living simply off the land, working on cattle ranches and moving freely as nomads with ‘no master and no god’. Today’s gauchos have been forced to evolve. They are becoming an endangered species, a vanishing culture. The new global order and economic reality impinges on even the most deeply rooted national symbol.