Sergio LarraĆn - Gifted Gallery
- Lilium
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Sergio LarraĆn EcheƱique, born 5 November 1931, was a Chilean photographer. He is considered the most important Chilean photographer in history, making street photography, often of children, using "shadow and angles in a way few had tried before."
LarraĆn was born in Santiago, into one of Chile's wealthiest families. HeĀ surrounded himself with music, books, and paintings all his life because of his father, Sergio LarraĆn GarcĆa-Moreno, who was an architect and aĀ connoisseur of art who founded the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art. LarraĆn took up photography in 1949, and from then until 1953, he studied forestry at the University of California at Berkeley. He then attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor before setting off to travel throughout Europe and the Middle East. He became a staff photographer for the Brazilian magazine O Cruzeiro and in 1956 the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought two of his pictures.Ā Ā
In 1958, LarraĆn was given a grant from the British Council that allowed him to produce a series of photographs of London. The same year Henri Cartier-Bresson saw his photographs of street children and suggested that he work for Magnum.
LarraĆn spent two years in Paris, where he worked for international press titles. He became a Magnum associate in 1959 and a full member in 1961. He returned to Chile in 1961 when the poet Pablo Neruda invited him to photograph his house, which was later turned into the a book: A House in the Sand - Pablo Neruda and Sergio Larrain, 1969.
Photographs he took in ParisĀ by Notre Dame Cathedral, which revealed scenes of a couple only upon processing, became the basis for his and Argentine writer Julio CortĆ”zar's story, "Las Babas del Diablo" ("The Devil's Drool"), which in turn inspired Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film Blowup.
In 1968, he came into contact with Bolivian guru Ćscar Ichazo and virtually gave up photography in 1972 in order to pursue his study of Eastern culture and mysticism, adopting a lifestyle in keeping with his ideals. He devoted himself to spreading knowledge of yoga, writing, painting in oils.
He retreated from public and professional life to live in a Chilean mountain village, TulahuĆ©n, and at an even more remote refuge that he built. He also wrote and continued to make personal photography, including that of the Chilean port of ValparaĆso. Sergio LarraĆn died 7 February 2012 at the age of 80.
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