Sergio Larrain - Valparaiso - 2024

'If we walk up and down every staircase in Valparaiso, we will have made a trip around the world'
- Pablo Neruda -

SUPER BEAUTIFUL BOOK by genious Sergio Larrain about Valparaiso, a photo series which was published for the very first time in France in 1991 in a small print run with a very small selection of pictures (Martin Parr, The Photobook, vol 2, page 102).

Here the new (enlarged) edition, the first American (English-language) publication of Sergio Larrain's much-prized book which explores his artistic relationship with the Chilean seaport he called home.

New, mint, unread - COLLECTOR'S COPY.

Welcome to the LAST PHOTOBOOK AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com starting this year -
with more than 100 great lots from my personal collection and from recent acquisitions.

'Sergio Larrain (1931–2012) published very few books during his lifetime, but perhaps the most celebrated was Valparaíso. He photographed this Chilean seaport throughout his career, but it was in the early 1960s, when he returned to his homeland after traveling the world as a Magnum photographer, that it became a focus of his attention. He saw it as "a sordid yet romantic city," standing between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, falling into a slow decline as its trading importance faded away, yet still retaining hints of beauty and magic.
Sergio Larrain: Valparaíso is based on a layout designed by Larrain in 1993 in response to the original French edition of 1991. It features a text by Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, specially written for Larrain; an essay by Agnès Sire; and a selection of previously unpublished photographs taken between 1952 and 1992, expanding the original thirty-six images to a total of 120. Handwritten notes and texts by Larrain himself accompany the photographs.'
(from the publisher)

Like always we guarantee detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance and of course combined shipping - worldwide.

"The Chilean photographer Sergio Larraín is (by choice) amongst the least known of the Magnum photographers, yet he has produced two of the most seductive photobooks ever to emerge from Latin America. The first of these, El Rectángulo en la mano (The Rectangle in the Hand), which was published to accompany an exhibition of his work at the Brazilian Embassy in Santiago, can be considered to be his aesthetic manifesto - his equivalent of Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment - and it shows him to be a classic street photographer.
His work is, however, very different from that of the master of the 'decisive moment', Cartier-Bresson (see Volume I, pages 208-9). Sergio Larraín's moments, indeed, might be described more accurately as indecisive. He is a master of half-lights, blurred impressions and off-kilter angles."
- Gerry Badger -

"A closer model for Sergio Larrain would be Robert Frank (see Volume I, pages 247, 261, 264), and like the Swiss photographer he photographed in London in the late 1950s, similarly intrigued by fog, gaslight and bowler-hatted city gents. Also like Frank, he practises a kind of sharp-eyed improvization, reliant on spontaneity and chance, a photographer of hints rather than certainties.
For example, two mysterious, anonymous figures pass each other on the street, connected only by the fact that they have been captured and put into the same frame, made to participate in a psychodrama of the photographer's devising. Of course, many street photographers do this sort of thing, but there is a psychological edge, a drama to Larraín's pictures.
Valparaiso, a study of the Chilean sea port, continues in the same vein as El Rectángulo en la mano, demonstrating both Larraín's consistency and his romantic tendency to dramatize. His sea port, like his photography, is best when lights are low, and the city's larger-than-life characters tend to make their appearance. He is clearly fascinated by the raffish nature of any great sea port, giving us sailors, bars, brothels, prostitutes and gangsters, shot in the most seductive stream-of-con-sciousness style - blurred, grainy, angular and using the frame edges superbly well."
- Gerry Badger -

Thames and Hudson, New York. 2025. First American edition, first printing.
It is mentioned at the end of the book as publishing year '2025', but came out earlier.
Content, size and layout identical with the first printing by 'Atelier EXB (Éditions Xavier Barral, Paris)' in 2016 and the first English printing by 'Thames and Hudson, London'.

Hardcover in linen with bellyband (as issued). 210 pages. 175 x 240 mm. 120 black and white photographs. Photos: Sergio Larrain. Essay: Pablo Neruda. Edited: Agnes Sire. Design: Xavier Barral. Text in French.

Fantastic Sergio Larrain title - in perfect condition.
We THANK YOU SO MUCH to make our single-seller photobook auctions on Catawiki so successful.
Ecki Heuser & team are wishing ALL THE BEST TO YOU AND YOURS for 2025.

"A man shrouded in mystery, Sergio Larrain (1931-2012) could be called a photographer’s photographer. As­suming the perspective of a vagabond, the Chilean captured breathtaking images, largely working in the fifties and sixties. Dramatic light, dark shadows, and experimental cropping characterize these black-and-white photographs, immediate and sensitive pictures of prostitutes, street children, and beggars, who are always surrounded by an air of poetry. At the invitation of his friend Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sergio Larrain be­came a full member of Magnum Photos in 1961, but he then retreated from cooperating with the media. This first publication to provide an overview of the pi­oneering work of this independent mind was devel­oped in collaboration with Larrain’s heirs. It naturally also includes photographs from Valparaiso, probably his most famous book project, for which no one less than Pablo Neruda wrote the accompanying text."
(from the publisher of the Sergio Larrain monograph)