“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
– Robert Capa
Of all the visual arts, photojournalism is by far the most thrilling to create. You don’t see sculptors darting through crowds. It’s rare that a painter charges a celebrity with an easel. There’s a lot to be said for patiently drawing with pencil and pastel, but photojournalists are outdoor people, treating the entire world as their canvas. Their job is intensely physical: They climb streetlamps, lean out of moving cars, dangle over balustrades, and crawl across gravel – anything to “get the shot.”
We should know: The Tico Times has been photographing daily life in Costa Rica since 1956.
Two weeks ago, we turned our office in Barrio Amón into a makeshift gallery for the Art City Tour. Droves of people showed up and perused our archives. We chatted with visitors, played some music, and shared some sangria. It was a really fun night.
But that was just a warm-up. This month, we are overjoyed to present our new exhibit, “58 Years of Costa Rica, Through Our Eyes and Yours.” We are happier still to collaborate with the Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center in Los Yoses, one of the most distinguished educational institutions in the country. The exhibition opens to the public Thursday, Dec. 4, and continues through the end of January.
This is a brand-new endeavor for The Tico Times, and we hope you’ll stop by. While the display in our offices incorporated decades of photos and covers, the Cultural Center will also showcase the finest work of our current staff photographers. You’ll see street scenes in San José, small-town life in the countryside, celebrations, protests, portraits, landscapes, action shots, and homages to the 2014 World Cup.
The Tico Times staff has long believed that photography is more than a storytelling device. A great photograph often outlives the article it illustrates; the best photographs require no captions at all. Capturing a moment through the crosshairs of a telephoto lens is an audacious craft, and if one of our photographers has bumped your shoulder or stomped your foot in a crowd, we hope this exhibit will partly explain why. We love snapping those images, and we love to bring them to you every day. To celebrate the end of an extraordinary year, we look forward to sharing some our favorite photographs at the Cultural Center.
So take some time off this December and see our work – and as ever, thanks for reading!
“58 Years of Costa Rica, Through Our Eyes and Yours” will be displayed Dec. 4 through Jan. 30 at the Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano, San Pedro. Free. Info: Cultural Center website.
