thisischile.cl describes the life and work of the great Chilean Sergio Larrain
From the start, his photographs were received more than well. He appeared in the Latin American art collection at the MoMA and won a scholarship from the British Council in 1958, which enabled him to shoot a feature on London. The feature impressed Henri Cartier Bresson, who held the keys to the Mount Olympus of photography: Magnum Photos. But to enter this select club, he had to pass one test. The Frenchman gave the Chilean an almost impossible mission: to photograph Giuseppe Russo, an Italian Mafioso wanted by police and accused of several murders. Larraín kept his cool and began an investigation in Rome which would take him as far as Sicily, taking photo after photo of everything he saw, until he finally found Russo in Caltanissetta. He spent fifteen days with the bodyguards, outside the circle of trust, without picking up a camera. The photographer passed himself off as a simple art aficionado and made himself so invisible that none of the entourage batted an eyelid when he finally snapped a picture of the mafia boss with a 35 mm Leica. The pictures were published in Life, Paris Match and all the top tier magazines. Larraín was accepted into Magnum in 1962, three years later.
The Aperture book reproduces a couple of letters that Larrain wrote to Cartier-Bresson. According to LBM the following letter was written in 1960
I try to do only work that I really care for. It is the only way for keeping me alive photographically, and I take as much time as I [need]. I keep myself in a slow peace, with much time for myself and doing other things, and see how photography develops…if it continues to develop… I do what I want the way I want, I feel that the rushing of journalism – being ready to jump on any story, all the time – destroy my love and concentration for work.
LBM complains that the Aperture book does not reproduce any of Larrain’s letters to Cartier-Bresson. Nevertheless it does include a 1987 letter Larrain wrote to the book’s editor, Agnès Sire, the current director of Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, being a prolific letter writer according to an obituary in The Guardian who had given up photography in the 1970ies
Good photography, or any other manifestation in man, comes from a state of grace. Grace comes when you are delivered from conventions, obligations, convenience, competition, and you are free, like a child in his first discovery of reality. You walk around in surprise, seeing reality as if [it is] for the first time.