Matias explained that the name Boluddha combines humor, self-awareness, and the seriousness with which he approaches photography: “The name is a combination of ‘boludo,’ which is an affectionate way to call someone an idiot in Argentina, and of course the ‘Buddha,’ the enlightened one. So we get to an enlightened idiot, which is honestly the most accurate description of me there is.”
“Photography is literally the pursuit of light, and I do take that pursuit seriously, sometimes embarrassingly so, which can easily make me look like a fool (spending a whole day circling a single building, counting tiles, lying on the floor in public, etc.). But I also refuse to pretend there’s anything mystical happening.”
#4 “Casa Milà”
In typical fashion Gaudi seeks to find natural curves and organic shapes, avoiding straight lines and obvious symmetries.
On the roof we see the sculptural elements which have become one of Gaudi’s hallmarks, including a small mosaic archway which seems to perfectly frame the view to what would finally be his greatest work La Sagrada Familia. UNESCO declared La Pedrera a World Heritage Site in 1984.”
“Both things are true at once, and the name holds both. The moment you start believing you’re only the Buddha part, your photos get pretentious. The moment you’re only the boludo, you stop showing up at sunrise. You need the tension.”
#6 “Brick-Ception”
#7 “The House In The Hat”
He explained that his path toward architectural photography grew naturally from an early interest in visual art, storytelling, and graphic design: “There was no lightning bolt. I’ve always been a very visually based mind and obsessed with every kind of art and storytelling. Having worked in graphic design when I was younger helped me start to think in grids, alignment, negative space, all of that, just on a screen instead of outside. Photography came naturally out of those foundations.”
#9 “Palazzo Farnese”
“And architecture specifically because buildings are the most honest subject there is. A building can’t pose. It can’t have a bad day. It just stands there being exactly what someone decided it should be, decades or centuries ago, and then life happens all over it: laundry on balconies, satellite dishes, plants, graffiti, chaos. That dialogue, between the coherent thing someone dreamed up and the organic mess living inside it, that’s basically what my work is about.”
Growing up and living across several countries taught Matias to approach every city as an outsider searching for its underlying patterns: “Quick summary: I was born in Buenos Aires, moved to Germany at age six, then the Netherlands, school in Belgium, then studied in the UK, lived in Essex, then London. Moved back to Germany again, and finally Barcelona in 2008, which was supposed to be a weekend and has now lasted eighteen years.”
#12 “Yellow Korner”
#13 “Arc & Texture”
Construction began in the year 784 as a mosque, with later expansions by the Emirates and Califates of Cordoba, reaching an impressive 23.000 square meter space, making it one of the largest mosques in the world at the time, second only to Mecca.
In 1238 during Spain's 'Reconquista' the mosque was turned into a catholic cathedral, and in 1523 a basilica was placed in the very center of the structure, making for one of the most interesting amalgams of these two religions and cultures which today coexist in this magical space.”
“When you grow up like that you never fully belong anywhere, so you become an observer by default. You’re always the outsider trying to decode the local patterns: how people queue, how they park, how they hang their washing. Eventually you realize every city is running the same program with different settings. Humans and their habits produce patterns everywhere, every habit leaves a residue, and once you’ve moved enough times you start to see the patterns others mistake for default reality. That double vision is the whole toolkit. The camera came later; the way of looking came from being a foreigner everywhere, permanently.”
#14 “A House In Blue”
#15 “Into The Fold”
One of my favorite buildings in Singapore with its endless straight lines, giant teal line cutting the white, laundry adding a dash of color, and the giant open center filling everything with light.”
When describing his process, he said that discovering a location is only the beginning of a long search for the angle where every element falls into place: “It can come about at any moment through any source: a long walk through a previously unknown part of town, a screenshot, the corner of a building glimpsed from a bus, someone’s holiday photo where I ignore the person and zoom into the facade behind them.”
#16 “Ok Bloomer”
#17 “Discordia En Concordia”
“Then I research: what is it, who built it, when does the sun hit which side. Then I go visit and I walk around it, for hours. If possible I go inside, spend time looking at the details, the lines, the spaces it creates and the moods it invokes. How does it interact with the light? How do the shadows move through it? Sometimes I come back over multiple days. I’m looking for the point of view where the building resolves, where all the lines agree with each other. Every angle, every beam of light. Most of the time the ‘perfect’ spot is somewhere stupid: the middle of a road, a private rooftop, flat on my back in an entrance. For aerial work it’s helicopters, hanging off the side, which sounds cool but is mostly logistics and nausea management. The final composition is rarely a decision so much as a recognition. You move around until suddenly the chaos snaps into order, and your body knows it before your brain does.”
#18 “What Immortal Hand Or Eye, Dare Fame Thy Fearful Symmetry”
As the fire left the building in blackened ruins with only the original apse and vaulting over the altar and the bell tower remaining Bofill and his team decided to engage in the rebuild applying modern building techniques, without leaving behind Romanesque imagery associated with the fallen structure.
#19 “Sun And Games”
The adjacent church exhibits some of the most beautiful Neo-Gothic traits the city has to offer, as well as influences of the then-current Neo-Mudéjar style which borrows from the Moorish design spread around the Iberian Peninsula. According to the architect Joan Bassegoda, at different times of the project a certain young and promising Antoni Gaudi did participate, with the interior ceiling being rumored to be his work.”
Symmetry and repetition may guide his plans, but Matias believes that observation and interpretation can never be entirely separated: “Both, and honestly at this point I think the distinctions have fully dissolved after all these years. I genuinely believe that one cannot remove themselves from an observation, that we project our views onto the world just as much as we perceive it. To produce is to reproduce, and the opposite is also true.”
#20 “Dalmatian Athens”
