Click on a photograph to see different aspects of the market

The market is full of colour; bright-new and faded-old.  Streets of second-hand stalls, with household objects from bygone eras, evoking childhood memories.  On these stalls, the future we are innocent of is staring up at us.  We look at these objects – wedding photos, family portraits, clothes, shoes, old-fashioned kitchen utensils, out-of-print books, obsolete technologies – as the future of other people, a future of abandonment, obsolescence, impermanence, decay and mortality.  But we are looking at our own future, the remnants of which, one day, will likewise be strewn about the market.

But there is also the hustle and bustle of life, of the present, of the ‘here-and-now’.  Fresh fruit and vegetables, bright shiny tools, souvenirs, incense; neatly arranged in dazzling displays; others tossed about higgledy-piggledy.  The juxtaposition of things antique and modern, colourful and faded, or just fading.

Sean Partridge

*Tristán Narvaja is the largest outdoor market in Montevideo. It takes its name from the principal street in which it is held every Sunday throughout the year.  The street is named after the 19^th Century law maker, and the market itself was inaugurated in 1909.   Everything is on sale, from fruit, vegetables and other comestibles, to antiques and all manner of new and second-hand items.

For more information, visit the official website of Montevideo Municipality: http://www.montevideo.gub.uy/ciudad-y-cultura/ferias/feria-de-tristan-narvaja