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SARAH MEISTER PHOTOGRAPHY CURATOR MOMA
So, here are the beautiful prints.
Sergio Larraín, broken window and tree shadow.
purchased with Edward Steichen funds in 1954.
They have a wonderful pearly quality to them.
Beautiful condition, very soft printing style.
And the next two, have some sort of much more grit to it.
You see the sprocket holes from the negative.
You can see the prints don't lie as flat.
The paper is thinner.
It's also glossier, so it's more reflective of the light.
So it makes sense to me
that these may come actually in two different occasions.
Look, that's Captain Edward Steichen's handwriting.
Not very clear, but he writes MoMA Coll,
for MoMA Collection.
For me, especially when I see prints like these,
in this incredible, delicate silvery light...
when I see the kind of imbalance of the composition
and I think about where they were made...
In that sense, who made them and where they were and when.
That all matters.
That's a pretty good way to get to know a photographer.
He showed us the poor children
and a reality that was there for all to see
but nobody had seen it.
Until Sergio Larraín photographed it.
He disappears among the children
because he transforms
into a beggar, into an orphan.
Sergio Larraín's big issue was feeling
somewhat abandoned,
feeling orphaned somehow from his family.
He identified with those children.
Because through his photos, Queco realized
there was so much suffering in the world.
The pain that existed in the world.
The inequality.
He was skinny, a little shy, solitary.
The only boy in the house
and with three sisters.
I think Queco was very fragile,
he was a highly sensitive person in many aspects.
For Queco, it was very important that our father believed in him.
I think he cared a lot about our father's opinion of him.
I think my father liked success very much.
If you were a photographer,
you had to be successful.
If you were an academic, you had to be successful.
You were to do things with enthusiasm and well.
He felt so belittled next to my father,
because maybe Queco felt
that he wasn't fulfilling my father's wishes,
that he didn't have...
all the talents and everything
that my father expected from him.
I had a set of letters from Queco to my father.
In one letter it said:
"Dad, I want to tell you
that you will never have the son you wanted."
SERGIO LARRAÍN THE ETERNAL MOMENT
We never lacked anything.
On the contrary, there was an abundance of everything.
It was a very fun house,
in one part we had a tennis court,
and we had a swimming pool.
Lots of activities, trips, books.
We had all sorts of opportunities.
It was a happy childhood.
Without any worries.
He rejected his background
and all the frivolity,
the money and the pomposity.
And that they invited
my father to conferences,
that he was always a dean,
that he always had high positions
and people admired him.
Sergio Larraín García-Moreno
and Mercedes Echeñique Correa
de Larraín, at that time,
when women belonged to men.
She was beautiful.
Look how flirtatious she was
with her fishnet stockings.
My father, Sergio Larraín,
was a very successful architect.
He was very sociable,
he held various positions
at the university later on.
He was a dean
at the School of Architecture.
He created the School of Design.
After that, he started all the work
with the founding of the museum.
His father begins to unravel
the mysteries in Latin America.
He becomes an avid collector,
particularly of ancestral cultures.
On those journeys,
he is accompanied by his wife,
by his friends, historians, writers,
who through their dialogues,
begin to visualize
that this journey isn't just the exploration of a culture,
but also a sort of discovery of their own origins.
Latin American.
Primordial.
Immediately a sort of commitment is made,
a profound commitment
to make these treasures known.
So he starts to accumulate and collect,
to gather from different places
very important collections that ultimately form the founding collection
of the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art
and which he generously donates to a foundation
so that it can exist for the pleasure
and appreciation of the Chilean public.
And this teaching certainly must have left an impression
on Sergio Larraín.
Fine Art Photography,
as it's called today,
was a natural practice for Sergio Larraín,
an instinctive practice
because he struggled with his familial identity.
With his American identity.
With his Chilean identity.
And with his personal process of identity
as a restless adolescent,
with conflicts.
When Queco decided to go
and study Forestry in the United States,
my father supported him 100 per cent.
I think he wanted to leave home.
At that point, Queco's personality
started to change drastically,
and he started sending pretty terrible letters.
My father was very worried.
This is one of the letters he sent me
from the United States.
"Here I am, taking a break from studying
to write to you.
I've been thinking about myself constantly
and that's bad.
When you think about yourself too much,
it becomes increasingly difficult to think
about so many other things.
And very difficult to get involved with other people.
You start to dream
about how nice it would be to hug someone,
it doesn't matter who.
And that they love you very much.
And then you realize that it's bad.
And you start to think about God and Christ,
and about all of the good and great men,
and the shame comes and you feel regret
and you promise a thousand things.
But you're still alone all the time
and you can't escape the bad temptations."
Astonishing! So sad! This is so sad!
Because when I got these letters,
they didn't worry me
and now it makes me sad.
He felt that he could be a priest.
He had received Christian values,
that he never abandoned.
He took Communion every day.
Queco valued manual work very much, craftsmanship.
He made an analogy between work in the darkroom and mass,
the work of the priest at the altar.
He said it had to be immaculate, clean, because it was a ceremony.
"And it's the same here", he told me,
"everything has to be in order and done in stages
because this is the same as Communion
or the Eucharist,
this is a ceremony."
He always had a relationship with religion,
he always had an interest.
My mother renounced her previous life.
She decided that she needed to focus
on working on her internal self,
she became very religious.
Everything changed in the house.
Primarily because of my brother's death.
It was such a hard blow,
especially for my mother.
My father found no better way of distracting the family
or dealing with the grief,
than by organizing a trip with all of us to Europe.
Not just Europe, we started in Egypt,
then we went to Israel and then Lebanon,
Greece, Italy, Paris, France,
then we went to London.
We had been traveling for six months,
my mother was suffering from an infinite sadness,
that she couldn't express
because my mother never expressed
anything she felt.
Is that my mother?
Look. Let's see.
Yes.
At Gaudi's "Sagrada Familia" in Barcelona.
He shows her so tiny in front
of that grandiose thing,
that fantastic church.
But my mother was overwhelmed
by the events,
by life, by the world.
He makes her look so small.
I think my mother felt like that.
Queco captured her how she was,
I think, or how he saw her.
It's so beautiful.
Queco was already taking photo after photo.
Look at that solitary character
with that big tree.
I think he resented loneliness a lot,
human loneliness.
Something much more philosophical,
not just him, not just his issue.
Look at that tree, all damaged,
truncated.
That huge tree. Is that my father?
It says on the back: "Dad. Mount Athos."
"Hepidemos. Dad. Greece."
It's from the same period.
Perhaps he wanted to see my father that small
so that he wouldn't be so scared of him.
Because I think he was afraid of my father.
I don't know if it was fear, he resented him. A lot.
But they were from different galaxies.
Two worlds with so little in common.
This book is Cartier-Bresson's first book.
And this book belonged to Sergio's father,
Sergio Larraín.
Sergio Larraín learned from this book.
It's all expressed in here,
the counterpoint that Cartier-Bresson talks about.
There's a counterpoint here, much like Bach's.
And here pages are missing.
Some pages are cut out
and the pages are cut out by Sergio.
And he placed them next to his own,
to see how to master the geometry.
He made albums.
When Santiago died,
my mother became very good friends with Father Hurtado,
because there was a home for homeless children
and at that time Queco began taking photos
of the children that lived under the bridges
and on the streets.
There is no concession.
The austerity of his image
is radicalized in him.
Everything that is there
has to be.
And in that frame,
that magical instant which Sergio Larraín always talked about, appears.
Consciousness opens,
where everything appears controlled, but everything is out of control.
Chance together with control
constitutes a philosophy of life,
that has to do
with this detachment from oneself
and letting things happen because they have to.
Sergio was...
a photographer with a very sharp eye,
very personal.
Clearly,
for every photographer, the idea of being part of Magnum
was something of a myth.
Thanks to Cartier-Bresson,
who Sergio meets after a trip to London,
I believe in 1958,
he meets Magnum photographers who propose
that he join the Co-operative.
After that, he settles in Europe,
in France, in Paris.
From France he makes
an enormous amount of trips,
for magazines,
commissioned by Magnum.
He went to Iran, Algeria,
Sicily, lots of places.
"I'm nervous because my report has been published in Match.
Because I've been in Via Veneto,
where all the exceptional people in Rome are.
And I've been received so well
by the photographers, very amicably.
The Magnum Aristocracy.
I've been with the divas and stars,
that whole ambiance that excites me,
the beauties
and I tremble and I'm anxious
to be a part of that world of lights,
and try to be in the center of it all
and conquer it,
to capture the people,
the beauties and prevail amongst the men with prestige,
and I tremble.
And those photos that I hardly even realize
I've taken in the moment,
become important
and stand out from the rest.
All that emotion.
The self."
I am, I am, I am! The self.
And he has the confidence to say:
"I try to impose myself and captivate
and I want to sleep with all the women."
Strong.
But honest.
He says it and doesn't hide it.
I was always impressed by Sergio.
I always saw him
as a kind of monk,
but with such a high level of concentration,
something very intense.
He transmitted something very intense,
and we knew from a young age,
that he was taking photos with pretty strong themes.
His photos were impressive,
and they fit with the character
that I felt Sergio was.
There was something dramatic.
ENRICO MOCHI DIGITAL MANAGER MAGNUM PHOTOS PARIS
Here it is. Sergio Larraín photographed in Milan
the poet Salvatore Quasimodo,
who won the Nobel Prize for Literature that year.
Here we are in front of Sergio Larraín's prints,
vintage prints from that era.
Here we have different examples of subjects,
images Sergio took at the UN,
that were used a lot by the press.
This one is of the famous Shah of Iran's wedding.
This one is Tierra del Fuego.
What's really interesting
is the composition of the faces that Sergio chose,
because we can follow the eye's trail
moving from one face to another
when we look at this photo.
Maybe Palermo, but could be anywhere.
Magnum commissioned him to do a report
about the Mafia in Sicily,
and no other photographer accepted it at the time.
Once there, he passed as a tourist
to try and get close
to the Mafia personalities.
In the end, he managed to make contact
with this character, Russo,
who was one of the most wanted mafiosos in Sicily.
These photos were very important
because Magnum offered them
to prestigious magazines
like "Life" and others,
and that was very good
for Magnum at that time.
Giuseppe Russo.
Giuseppe Genco Russo.
Genco Russo?
That gentleman was a bit mafioso.
They were taking him to another prison,
at that time they traveled by train.
I'm talking about many years ago.
But he wasn't a gentleman.
He was! All mafiosos are gentlemen!
But if he could help, he helped.
He was a handsome man,
taller than me, proud.
When you talk to these people
they are sweet talkers.
Even with people they have issues with.
It's not that they're bad, they are good people.
Evil came before!
That's how it goes...
They're good at being evil! Not good!
Unfortunately.
The Mafia is another state,
they have networks
operating all over the world.
"Life". This is an issue from April 1960,
that published
the fourth part of "The Evil Work of the Mafia",
which was a series of reports
about the Mafia
as this scandalous entity,
the fights within the Mafia.
He starts to publish these photos,
and then they appear in reports.
This one is a Mafia member's funeral,
police standing guard
on the streets of Sicily.
Life.
Sergio's eye is present in all of them.
These shots, some chickens, widows, etc.
This other one, the funeral with guards
above keeping watch,
it portrays the moment of fear
that the city must have experienced and Sergio behind.
Giuseppe Russo taking a nap
under the sacred heart.
To have been there in the bedroom
with him sleeping,
the truth is Sergio must have become a good friend
and gained his trust
that I don't know how he managed
and how long it took.
But once this photo was published,
I'm sure he must have been sentenced to death,
for high treason.
"I had no idea what the Mafia was.
They just said:
'Hey, here's another Leica camera
and some money,
go to Rome, stay at this hotel
and they will pick you up.
And you have to take photos in Sicily.'
But they didn't explain much more.
Then I arrive in Sicily,
and once I start taking the photos,
I begin to realize what I've got myself into.
Then I understand the real weight of it."
He manages to get pretty close to them.
They don't consider the potential importance of those photographs
and they give him access.
The last photo he took is the one of the mafioso taking a nap
with the painting of Christ behind,
which he took at siesta time,
through the window shutters.
He knew then that it was dangerous.
So he went back to his hotel,
packed his suitcase and went to Rome
and then France.
When they saw all this at Magnum
and it brought in a large amount of money,
because it was sold all over the world,
So Magnum said:
"We've got a gold mine here.
This photographer is going to bring us
more big news stories like this".
So they start to commission him
similar work.
And Queco is not good at that.
Queco is not a journalist,
Queco is not a reporter,
Queco is not a paparazzi.
He's a poet.
The power of the images begins in the framing.
Sergio made framing
the essence of his work.
He went beyond academic framing.
He was daring.
He broke certain established criteria of the time.
I think Sergio's photographs
need an interpretation key
to understand his photography.
Because he isn't immediate,
we need the photo's story
and his personal story.
Only with all those elements,
can we truly appreciate the quality of Sergio's images.
What strikes me most is
that Larraín's photographs are like
when a washing machine is on spin mode,
it finishes and you open the machine,
and all the clothes are around the drum, right?
And the center is free.
Everything happens on the edge.
Everything is on the verge of going out
but it's inside.
He starts to compose with what we don't see.
Documentary photography,
in its beginnings, tried to say things,
to be clear, to be pertinent, to be just.
And here's this photographer,
in that same era,
who doesn't try to say everything,
he tries to suggest things,
and that was notable, it was revolutionary,
for that time.
With Sergio we'd talk about
how difficult photography is.
Because in one click,
you've got to write a story.
What started to draw my attention
was what he looked at.
A sweater, a clock,
things we don't normally look at.
The earth, the contact between matter,
the lines.
This man who's cut, the tired dog,
he portrays the situation.
He said: "You need to photograph the air."
It doesn't matter if you cut someone's head,
or if there's a hand in the shot, or an eye,
or it's out of focus.
He said: "Catch the air.
The air that's circulating,
that's what's important."
Sergio Larraín is always in search of himself.
When he says that
when he scans the exterior,
with the rectangle in his hands,
the camera,
it is within himself
that he searches for the images.
To understand Sergio Larraín's work,
we must understand that text.
It's not the external world that matters.
The gaze,
the solitude,
the tenderness in that woman.
It is all there.
And the world passing by her,
totally indifferent.
The world moves around her.
And that second,
that fleeting millisecond
that we photographers are always chasing
and that he has.
There are photos of Sergio's in which
the damage in the characters' gazes
is a miracle.
And that is what moves me.
Photographing that damage, that solitude,
I know that he is photographing his solitude,
that followed him to the end of his life.
There's a tremendous letter which he wrote
to Cartier-Bresson in which he says:
"I've tried to do what I have been asked."
Because he wants to be a good boy,
he doesn't want to let down this father,
that is Cartier-Bresson,
in the way he feels that he has disappointed
his real father.
"Dear Henri,
Thank you for your letter.
It is always a joy to receive your news.
Here I am.
I spend most of the time writing
and I take a photograph here and there.
I'm disconcerted.
I love photography as a visual art,
like a painter loves painting.
That's the photography that I like.
But the work that sells forces me to adapt.
It's like a painter having to make signs.
I don't like doing it. It is a waste of time.
Taking good photographs is difficult,
it takes a long time.
I tried to adapt as soon as I joined the group.
But I would like to find a means that allows me
to act at a level that is more vital for me.
I can't keep adapting myself.
That's why I'm writing.
I have a nine-month-old daughter that I love.
A beautiful house. A kind wife.
And a desire to act,
which I need to do in a way
that is satisfactory for me.
My warmest regards, Sergio."
Love,
I'm going to buy
A little plane you can fly
At one point it was like a playground for Chilean intellectuals
to go hang out in Valparaiso.
Where things happened,
the sailors, the girls,
the cabarets, the bohemia,
and the super interesting people that came out of there.
Painters, musicians, architects,
politicians, priests
and prostitutes.
You like to dance to the rhythm of "Chipi chipi"
There was "The House of the Seven Mirrors",
and what a name:
"The House of the Seven Mirrors."
Where marvelous things happened.
Love, I'm going to buy
A little boat to sail
On our honeymoon
Love, I'm going to buy
A little train to take
And I asked him: "But Queco,
how did you manage to get so close up
in The House of the Seven Mirrors?"
That mixture of dance hall, brothel, cabaret.
It wasn't easy to just go there and take photos.
"Look," he said, "I'd go with my camera
in a paper bag,
I'd fit in, if I didn't draw attention,
I'd take the camera out of the bag
and leave it on the table.
I'd wait another twenty minutes, another beer,
and if the coast was still clear,
I'd take the camera, without making a fuss,
without getting up from my seat,
without moving, without making
any abrupt movements
and I'd take the photo."
There are books written about his work,
but by far the most important is,
"The Rectangle in the Hand".
It compiles Sergio's most important work,
the photos of the girls coming down the steps
in the Bavestrello passage in Valparaiso.
One can recognize Sergio Larraín's work immediately.
It's a talent that he had from the beginning,
from the photos for the "Home of Christ", the children from the Mapocho river.
One can see Larraín's signature immediately.
This is the most famous photo, this one here.
I'll show you if you like.
I managed to get this one in Paris.
A marvelous photo,
for me, it's one of the most important photos in the world.
This one with the girls going down the stairs.
He told me that first
he investigated the light,
the shadow,
he already knew that a certain time,
a certain moment,
would produce that play of light.
So he arrived, set up his camera,
not waiting for anything.
He would say that you had to be like in the film
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,"
when he would draw his gun
and put it straight back.
It was the same with the camera,
he knew the aperture and the speed in his mind,
he would take it out, shoot, and lower it.
Attracting as little attention as possible.
So, there he was,
when he sees a girl descending slowly.
He talks to her and asks if she can walk down again.
When she goes down again,
another girl appears out of nowhere, dressed almost in the same way.
And the miracle of reality occurs.
I found a photo of my dad with me as a baby
and one of my dad from a magazine
from that time, it's sepia.
"Sergio Larraín photographing the Plaza de Armas for 'Life' magazine."
For me, he was the image of masculine beauty.
I had tremendous admiration
and even more so because I never saw him,
because I lived in France with my mother.
I saw photos of him
and I found him so handsome,
for me, all the actors at the time, like Gregory Peck,
were nothing compared to my dad.
We went to Egypt, he and I.
He took me to Egypt.
I was little,
I must have been nine or ten years old.
And since my dad was clueless about upbringing,
about what should and shouldn't be done,
I would climb the palm trees like a monkey
and my dad wouldn't tell me off,
he didn't say anything.
So, it was a strange father-daughter relationship,
not typical.
I think he had an artistic hyper-sensitivity,
to create with a profoundness,
and on the other hand,
he was like an adolescent
that never adapted to anything.
He never wanted to adapt,
ever.
SERGIO LARRAÍN, SEPTEMBER 11 - DECEMBER 22, 2013
Every time I went to one of his exhibitions,
I felt like crying.
In general, when I see an exhibition,
I see the artist.
If I see a painting by Picasso, I see Picasso.
If I see one of your paintings, I see you.
If I see one of my dad's photos, I see my dad.
And that is what moves me, seeing the artist,
connecting with the artist.
I must have been around
seven or eight years old.
And I met him under quite nice circumstances,
I met him as a potential boyfriend of my mother's.
I think my mum had the same passion for drawing
that Sergio had for photography.
They both had a way of capturing reality.
My mother with pencils and brushes,
and Sergio with his camera.
In that sense, they were doing something very similar.
CARMEN SILVA PAINTER
"Dear Sweetheart,
I've spent the entire trip writing
to all the people whose addresses I have.
It keeps me from getting bored on an endless trip,
on a boat that sways so much.
We've been sailing in the canals recently
and the landscape is beautiful now.
I stand at the highest part of the ship,
I put the cameras down on the ground,
and I just watch.
I pick up a camera
and point it at a cloud a while,
then I put it down
and watch for a long while again,
while the water passes by the ship,
and soon we'll arrive in Punta Arenas,
where I plan to swirl around the region
and catch its incredible wonders.
Sweetheart, my love."
So beautiful!
See, all this watching, watching the world,
capturing it, him with his camera,
my mother with her oil paints and paper.
Fantastic.
Queco returns to South America, to Chile,
as a sort of correspondent.
He sent many things. I think 90 per cent of them weren't published.
And he told me about his walks in the country
with Violeta Parra.
Violeta Parra with a tape recorder,
to record the songs of folk singers
and him taking photos.
They were good friends, intimate
with Violeta Parra.
The transparent look in his eyes.
He was a friendly being,
easy to establish a relationship with him.
I have ten photos and still frames of Sergio.
I don't know why I didn't take more photos.
Because he was there for an hour talking,
maybe so as not to interrupt the moment
that was being created with him.
I should've taken more photos,
but it's too late now.
There's no point in regret
when you're in front of the light table,
with the entire roll
and what's there is there, it's done.
He went to Arica,
he got into Eastern meditation
and the world of drugs,
and he changed.
Queco was in search
of an internal transformation,
of the world, and people.
And his search was full-scale,
because Queco was very intense.
Queco took very seriously
the matter of transcendence.
The answer at that moment was a master.
So this produced
a sort of step in his mind.
Queco felt that one had all the components,
but that the connection
with the energy was missing,
that know-how, that dexterity,
of doing an exercise
and obtaining an experience from the exercise.
When Queco did it,
there was no doubt in his mind,
that he had entered the light.
Sergio Larraín
is the father of my second child.
He was a person that I met
when I was in the spiritual search
of the seventies,
I was told about a man called Oscar Ichazo.
There was a lot of anguish at the time,
like there wasn't much hope.
And Oscar Ichazo brought a ray of light somehow,
he was a very powerful man,
an extremely powerful man.
And strange, he was different.
He wasn't what you expected from a master.
That period with the Arica group
was beautiful because there was so much energy.
Everyone was very awake,
but I didn't have the notion yet.
I was too young to realize that what we were experiencing there
was extremely profound and truly wonderful.
Oscar decided that man shouldn't be alone
but rather with a woman,
and I was there in the group with Queco,
I had already separated from my husband,
because the energy of the Arica group
was very tumultuous and intense
and many couples broke up.
So Queco,
who liked to do things very precisely,
and Oscar had just said that man wasn't alone but with woman,
he decided that I was there
and I was ideal,
and so we became a couple at that moment.
We were always moving towards
reaching higher levels of consciousness.
The higher the state of consciousness
of the person who takes that Satori,
the more perfect the photo will be.
In the sense of Satori,
of being able to bring Satori to photography.
Of being able to transmit that state,
where you look at something
with complete consciousness
and it's reproduced in the photo.
Because Satori is about being here
in the present moment,
which is what Queco most valued all the time:
the present.
The night I was initiated,
we were two new women.
So, I got undressed and I went in wearing just my underwear.
It was like a spiritual exercise,
and I was in the lotus position,
there were certain positions.
And well, sexually, it was the ultimate experience.
What can I tell you? The man was a genius.
But after having so much sex with him,
I was never that interested in sex again.
It was very secret.
It was only with the women
and the men couldn't know,
because according to Oscar men were at a much lower level than women.
My friends, all the women that were there,
never told.
But I did.
I told Queco.
And I think it was a big mistake.
The Tantrayana work we did with Oscar Ichazo
was not well received.
I think that troubled him a lot.
It troubled him
forever.
But he made a big mistake
when he took my son Juan Jose away from me.
A child should never be taken away from their mother. Ever.
In some way, Queco had defeated me.
And I didn't fight him.
I didn't fight him.
Queco was a person whose mood would change.
You could be talking to him
and the look in his eyes would shift,
and you could see that his look was different.
He was a different person.
Queco had a lot of internal demons
and they were intense.
He had a lot of internal conflicts.
He hurt people that he loved very much.
I think that was one of his greatest battles:
with himself.
In the end, he stopped being a photographer.
He was searching for himself, searching for peace.
He had gone to the North,
he had already self-exiled.
That's Tulahuén over there.
It's so dark in here, does it show up?
Yes, it looks good!
Let's pose here.
The walnut trees...
Look at that!
Lovely.
Come and look around a bit. I'm going to check on the jam.
Yes, so it doesn't stick.
Look, come and see, this is Ao's official room.
Well...
This was my father's house,
Sergio Larraín Echeñique,
who might have been a photographer for everyone else,
but for me he was just my father.
Today this is my house, well,
it was my house growing up too,
but it was considered my father's house.
Now I'm going to show you which room was mine.
This was my room, it's a bit untidy now
because it's not being used at the moment,
and the house got a bit destroyed by the earthquake.
Well, I built this bedroom just how I wanted it.
While the house was being built,
I decided that this was my room.
This was my father's monk cell,
where he would sit and write, meditate, paint, draw.
I think there's a photo with this image here.
Well, the monk's cell, or "monk's office",
is where the monk secludes himself,
to be within himself.
Well, it's just another room really,
but it has the things needed to be calm,
and where he can do what he wants,
it centers him and brings him inside himself.
I took this photo while he was sitting in his monk cell,
at the moment when he was doing what he did in his monk cell:
writing, taking notes, creating sentences,
compiling, making his lists,
because he was always making his lists.
You go to bed, get up in the morning,
I'm hungry, I'll make myself breakfast,
of course, I made myself breakfast,
because my dad didn't...
It was better not to bother him and tell him you were hungry.
You were best off making it yourself.
Because he didn't like to be interrupted,
particularly when he was concentrated.
Plus he was a little temperamental, let's say.
His mood was a little changeable.
He could be in a really good mood
and then all of a sudden he wasn't.
And he had a bit of a poker face,
so you couldn't tell from his face what was going on.
He was right about a lot of things,
but a lot of others he needed to update
and bring down to earth a bit.
He idealized them a little maybe.
But at the end of his life he did realize
and start to ground them.
And it was part of a mutual evolution.
Mine, because I was growing up,
and him, growing as a father with me.
He had no idea how to be a dad,
and no one does until it's their turn.
I finally found Sergio.
He accepted my camera,
but he asked me not to film his face.
Sergio showed me his photos and his watercolors.
He always had the unrelenting need
to correct himself,
to seek perfection.
I listened as he talked to me about photography
as a spiritual discipline.
He was in another world,
in an immaterial world,
in a spiritual world,
a utopian world,
and it was often impossible to follow him.
The only challenge you have is to achieve
the perfection of the rectangle.
And the subject has no importance at all,
at that moment you enter another dimension,
because you enter the order of reality.
You are organizing your consciousness,
and your center, and your body.
The moment you achieve a really good photo
is the moment that you align yourself
and have a moment of Satori.
When you take a photo, it's a rectangle,
with the things inside,
but the stronger lines are the borders.
Because it's not easy to reach reality.
Everyone is dreaming,
but to get here, you've got to transcend dreams.
In the end...
he had, I don't know if it's the courage,
or strength
or if it was just inevitable,
but he stopped taking photographs.
I think someone that stops like that,
someone so well-known, that did great things,
that stops suddenly and does something completely different,
whatever their field is,
deserves a certain respect.
Pompeii here...
JOSEF KOUDELKA MAGNUM PHOTOGRAPHER
I met him by chance
when he first arrived in Paris
and we became friends straight away.
I think our meeting was important for him.
But I think Sergio
had enormous talent,
but it was cut short.
He didn't complete his work.
He didn't take full advantage of his capability.
And when he would always send me letters,
saying: "We have to save the world"
or "We have to do this",
I would say: "Sergio, you have an ability
that not everyone has,
don't send me any more letters,
send me photographs.
Pick up your camera and take some photos."
He did send me some photos
but they weren't that good,
or at least I didn't like them.
When he wanted to destroy his material,
I said, "No way."
I didn't destroy anything.
He was an extraordinary guy,
but I think that he didn't reach
his full potential.
And that is sad for us,
maybe not for him,
because he did what he wanted.
He had the ability, but he didn't take full advantage of it.
I don't know what happened
with him later on.
But he must have had the life he wanted.
Here's to Sergio!
I remember him well.
The last time I saw him he didn't have his camera with him,
and I said, "Queco, the camera? Didn't you bring your camera?"
"No", he said, "photography is useless."
That was terrible.
I said: "Queco, what do you mean?"
"No", he said, "It's useless.
It doesn't change the world."
A letter...
that says, "Sweetheart".
He called me Sweetheart.
"Here is 'Valparaiso' finished,
with text and everything.
The original is in Paris, in Magnum,
in English.
"With the Valparaiso book,
I felt like going there to take photos.
I prepared my camera, rolls and traveled to Ovalle,
and from there I took a night bus to Valparaiso."
I went up to the room on the third floor
that looks over the little square
with the Arturo Prat monument.
And the room was poetry itself.
I started, I took out my camera,
I prepared everything,
I started to photograph.
With my camera ready, I set off
to one of the port's funiculars.
One with a long set of steps.
A very steep set of steps.
With people coming down in a hurry to get to work.
It was the most beautiful start to the day.
I spent three hours taking photos.
The day, the streets,
the hills, the elevators,
it is the most poetic walk
that you can take on the planet.
Delightful, tender, naive,
fragile, fantastic.
So good, that one can't imagine
that there is so much beauty on the planet.
The droplets after the rain
on the urban landscape.
Landscapes in detail: a gem.
Four hours had passed,
engrossed in the miracle of poetry,
taking photographs.
Now I am developing,
and I captured something of the delight of doing things with love,
for pleasure, for oneself.
I have enlarged about 14 photos of the new shots of Valparaiso.
They're really good!
Combined with the night shots
that I will never be able to do again,
at 60 years old, it's just not possible.
You can't do more than one or two subjects in your life.
You have to connect completely,
like when you get married.
You only do that with one or two places in your life.
No more. That's enough.
He knew poetry,
painting,
spirituality.
I've never been able to detach myself
100 per cent like he could, he didn't care,
he'd throw everything to the wind
and he lived at peace.
I think he knew that I forgave him,
because I stayed with him.
After all, I was the only one
who stayed with him
and put up with him,
because he was a character,
he had his... highs and lows.
That whole struggle throughout our lives,
to find each other,
which I managed to turn around,
and in the end,
when we loved each other deeply
and were such good friends,
he left.
I was so sad when he died.
I think that here he felt attacked from all sides,
by demands, expectations,
what people would say,
what's worthwhile, what's not.
There, he was able to create his kingdom.
Being there was good for Queco.
Is it recording?
-Yes. -Okay, ready.
Now we've entered universal consciousness.
The candle is a symbol of unity.
Life!
But, are you seeing what consciousness is?
Start by slowly closing your eyes,
breathe with a steady rhythm
and bring it to your abdomen
for three minutes.
Visualize yourself going into the Solar Plexus chakra,
located in the stomach area,
continue breathing rhythmically,
inhaling and exhaling steadily.
Now, imagine that you have a candle flame in your spinal cord
that rises with every breath
from the bottom to the top,
for one minute.
The golden-white candle,
now above your head,
slowly spreads throughout your whole body
until it transforms into a bubble
of golden-white light.
The golden bubble expands throughout the whole room.
Let it grow more and more
until it reaches the size of the building you are in.
Continue slowly expanding the bubble of light
to cover the entire planet.
Sense your auric field of light,
and feel one with the light.
Mentally use the mantra for one minute.
I am love, I am love, I am love.
I am God, I am God, I am God.
I am light, I am light, I am light.
In this state of serenity,
visualize a white light above your head,
that begins to spread through you.
With your mind's eye observe that you can start to communicate
verbally with your guide,
as if an old friend has come back
into your life again.
FOR MY MOTHER, VERONICA