Photographers [Oo] Life is what you choose | Sergio Larrain, 1931-2012

Sergio Larrain, 1931-2012

“People that do creative work, have to isolate themselves, they are all hermits, one way or another.”

“A good picture is born from a state of grace. Grace becomes manifest when one is freed from conventions, free as a child in his first discovery of reality. The game is then to organize the triangle.”

“I can only materialize that world of phantoms when I see something that resonates within me.”

Sergio Larrain, London, 1959

“The game [of photography] is to let go, to let the adventure begin. Like a sailboat dropping sails.”

“It is not easy to keep life alive, not degrade it to convinces, to conventions, to adaption […] The art is to live in happiness, with love, with truth, with purity, not swallowed by mechanization.”

“Don’t ever force things, otherwise the image would lose its poetry. Follow your own taste and nothing else. You are life and life is what you choose. What you do not like, don’t look at it, it’s no good. You’re the only criterion, but still look at everyone else.”

“In our work, of hunters of miracles, we have the happiness of the magic, but also the impossibility to control it… we have to be open to the muse… I suppose it has always been like this, when the kayak hunters went to the sea, they never knew if they were going to find the whale, or a storm..when we try to control things completely, boredom establish its reign, and we degrade… and at the same time life has to be kept going, always… that is why to make a good use of the hunt is wisdom… To keep this miracle of life, in happiness, in tenderness, forming children, preserving elders, listening to olders… the eternal moment, which is reality.”

Sergio Larrain, London, 1958-59

“Verlaine used to live drunkard, in hotels, in misery, but kept being a poet…has given us poetry, like a permanent sunshine…well trained pianists, keep quality all of their lives, with complete dedication, and living in the creations of composers, that preserve them from falling…”

“The photographer’s tragedy is that once he achieves a certain level of quality or fame, he wants to continue and he gets completely lost.”

Sergio Larrain, 1931-2012

Sergio Larrain, Self portrait

“I saved my first money…and bought my first Leica, not because I wanted to do photos, but because it was the most beautiful object that one could buy (also a typewriter)… for the first time in my life I had money to buy what I wanted.”

Sergio Larrain, in a letter to Agnes Sire (desk editor of Magnum – Paris)

Also:
Instant Views [o.] Summer | Photos by Sergio Larrain (1956-1978)