About Chilean photographer Sergio LARRAÍN (1931-2012)
Sergio LARRAÍN Echeñique joined Magnum Photos as an associate in 1959 - invited by Henri CARTIER-BRESSON - and became a full member in 1961. He is considered the most important Chilean photographer in history, making street photography, often of street children, using "shadow and angles in a way few had tried before. Photographs he took in Paris by Notre Dame Cathedral, which revealed scenes of a couple only upon processing, became the basis for Julio Cortázar's story, 'Las Babas del Diablo' (The Devil's Drool), which in turn inspired Michelangelo Antonioni in 1966 for his movie 'Blowup'. Sergio LARRAÍN worked professionally for a little over ten years, stopping in 1972. Following the Bolivian guru Oscar Ichazo, he retreated from public and professional life to live in a Chilean mountain village, Tulahuén, and at an even more remote refuge that he built, taking up calligraphy and meditation. He also wrote and continued to make personal photography, including that of the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Sergio LARRAÍN died in 2012 at the age of 80.
Photo books by and with works/books by Sergio LARRAÍN
- 'London 1958–59' (1988, 1998, 2002 as well as expanded 2021 with texts by Agnès Sire and by Roberto Bolaño, French/Spanish: 1998, 2020)
'Valparaiso' (1991, 2017)
'Sergio Larraín' (1999, by René BURRI)
'The Latin American Photobook' (2011)
'Photographs by Sergio Larrain' (2013)
'Sergio Larraín' (2013, 2014, 2015)
'Vagabond Photographer.' (2013)
'El rectangulo en la mano' (2018)