SERGIO LARRAIN
(1931-2012)“ A good picture is born of a state of grace. This happens when one is freed from conventions, free as a child discovering reality for the first time. The name of the game is then to organize the rectangle. “
Sergio Larraín Echeñique was a Chilean photographer. He worked for Magnum Photos during the 1960s. He is considered the most important Chilean photographer in history.
A notoriously reclusive artist, he has nonetheless become a touchstone for those who have come to know and love his work, including authors Roberto Bolaño and Julio Cortázar. Celebrated by Henri Cartier-Bresson, his contemporary and a co-founder of Magnum, Larrain’s experimental process yielded images that transformed the fixed nature of the medium. His images have left generations of viewers in awe of the simultaneous serenity and spontaneity that a camera can capture—when placed, that is, in the hands of an artist with such rare meditative passion.
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's 1966 film Blowup.
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All images courtesy of MAGNUM photos
