ABSTRACT
The celebrated image of Luis Barragán’s stable courtyard at San Cristobal
crystallizes the panoply of issues that shape the relation of photography
and landscape [12-1]. The photograph represents the vision and the work of
a single person: Armando Salas Portugal. In an instant removed from time,
this compelling image forever fixes, with light and chemicals, human and
animal, architecture and landscape. Like a fly embedded in amber, these
horses are set against the brilliant magenta walls for the ages; they will never
move again. Nor will the man who leads them, nor the light and shadow that
Salas Portugal so deftly captured. Over Barragán’s own framing of landscape
space, the photographer’s rectangular frame recomposes the work of the
designer and the life within the setting that has been so beautifully created.
