Sergio Larraín’s Valparaíso: More Than the Sum of Its Parts

A few weeks ago, at the International Center of Photography, I found myself lingering over an exhibition by a photographer I somehow knew nothing about: Sergio Larraín. His street photography resonated immediately, even though I couldn’t quite explain why. Many of the compositions were compellingly off-kilter, which fascinated me. Although the black-and-white images focused heavily on abandoned children in Santiago, the exhibit also included photographs from other periods of his career, including work from the Chilean port city of Valparaíso. I went back a second time just to be sure the spell wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t.

Larraín published very few books during his lifetime, the most celebrated being Valparaíso, first published in 1991. That original edition contained just 36 images. A newer edition, in English for the first time, was released in 2017 by Thames & Hudson. It includes an introduction by Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, essays by Agnès Sire (a French curator and one of the foremost interpreters of Larraín’s work) as well as Larraín’s handwritten and typed notes (idiosyncrasies and spelling errors intact) and correspondence with Henri Cartier-Bresson. This is the edition I walked out of the gift shop with, a few dollars poorer and much richer for it.

The first edition, now a collector's item.

As a physical object, the book is beautiful: a beige linen cover, Larraín’s name in Courier, and the title stamped in a typeface meant to mimic his handwriting. But the real gift is the expansion of images, from 36 to 120, images I can’t seem to pull myself away from.

In his introduction, Neruda writes about Valparaíso’s contradictions, calling it a “sordid yet romantic” place where beauty somehow rises from the grime and decay. Neruda’s words carry weight because he was literally there, alongside Larraín, during the making of some of these photographs.

The book opens with one of Larraín’s earliest and most famous images, made in 1952 when he was just twenty. Two girls, nearly identical, descend an unseen staircase. A shadow cuts across the frame; in a moment, the first girl will disappear entirely. It’s a simple scene, but Larraín knew immediately he’d captured something special. He was right. The photo has become one of his signature works.

While many of the museum images featured people and fit neatly into the category of street photography, the book includes plenty without any human presence at all. Plants. Railings. Buildings. Smooth sidewalks. Cracked ones. Leaves shot so close they verge on abstraction. And staircases—many, many staircases—ascending and descending, photographed from above, below, and every angle between.

Most photographers would try to remove an object intruding into the frame. Larraín does the opposite. A railing, a blurry passerby, a massive out-of-focus blob (is it a rock?) dominating most of the image—he keeps all of it. And somehow it works. You don’t feel like you’re observing a scene; you feel like you’ve stumbled into it, trying to dodge those same distractions before deciding to stop fighting it.

Many of the photos, with their unconventional perspectives, eccentric crops, and out of focus subjects, don’t impress as standalone images.  But when viewed together, they make perfect sense. The photos seem to speak to one another. Recurring motifs—steep stairways, narrow alleys, crumbling buildings, shadowed figures—create a mystical, melancholic atmosphere that deepens as the pages turn. Larraín conceived of these photos as a body of work intended for a book, not a loose collection., and it shows. His handwritten notes and sketches scattered throughout make it feel less like a conventional photobook and more like a visual poem.

Larraín’s photographic career was shockingly brief—roughly a decade—before he withdrew into a life devoted to meditation. Yet in that short span, he influenced generations of photographers. After spending time with Valparaíso, I understand why. If you’re looking for a photobook that rewards patience and feels genuinely unlike anything else on your shelf, this is it.