This photograph by Guillermo Srodek-Hart was an inaugural work belonging to what would become a decade long study on the Argentinian countryside. The resulting oeuvre Stories depicts places that seem to exist outside of time. This early work from 2004 is direct and clean, and feels somewhat distinct from the later works it pre-cursed. Static yet inviting of action. This photograph of a bocci court speaks to the history of place and the immigrant generation who brought an old world sport to their new one. Though still and quiet, we can feel the strike of energy behind every paint chip and imagine echos of cheers from absent onlookers. The court doesn’t measure in wins and losses, just games, days, years. As the players age its own fate seems destined to sunset.

This photograph is characteristic to the body of work, Stories, in that it marks time and action through evidence of wear. All Srodek-Hart’s subjects drew interest for one inherent quality: they were free from modernization. The places Srodek-Hart would go on to document featured some other exteriors- roadside shrines, scrap-yards, gardens, hides drying in the sun. More focus on interiors- small shops of disappearing trades, remote general stores, bars, and workbenches. Most interiors we identify with ease- butchers, bakers, barbers, broom makers. The general stores reveal remoteness through offerings that seem to anticipate all imaginable demand. The bars are refuges for socialization and workbenches especially show with intimacy the character of the singular patron through states of order and dis-order. These places are living relics; many have now gone extinct.