Gilles Larrain

Gilles Larrain (Dec 5, 1938) is a French-American photographer who believes photography is a way to “capture the landscape of the soul of a person.” By taking a unique approach to photography, which includes creating his own lighting, managing the entire darkroom process, and always having subjects come to his personal studio space, Larrain has created acclaimed pieces of art since 1969. In 1973, Larrain published the highly successful photographic book, Idols, which presented portraits of transvestites. Two generations later, the book inspired American photographer Ryan McGinley who wrote an April 2010 article in Vice Magazine, which identified Larrain and the book Idols as one of his early and biggest influences for experimenting with colors, casting, and props, because all of Larrain’s images in the book are raw without any manipulation. Larrain has photographed notable personalities in a wide range of creative disciplines, including the dancers of the American Ballet Theatre, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Salvador Dali, Miles Davis, Sting, Billy Joel, Roberto Rossellini, Norman Mailer, and more.

Early life and education

Born in Dalat, Indochina (now Vietnam) on December 5, 1938, Gilles Larrain began an atypical life moving to Chile, Argentina, Canada, France, and the USA, all before the age of 16.

His father, Hernán Larrain, was a diplomat with the Chilean consul in Vietnam and a painter. His mother, Charlotte Mayer-Blanchy, was a French-Vietnamese pianist and painter. He is the great, great grandson of Paul Blanchy, the first mayor of Saigon (1895-1901) and the first pepper producer of Vietnam. He is the grandnephew of Rafael Larrain, the cardinal of Talca (Chile).

Larrain quickly learned multiple languages every two years and cultivated personal insights throughout his global experiences. His education took on a more traditional slant, beginning with the Lycee Francais de New York (1954-1957). He met his first wife, Anne-Marie Maluski, whose father brought Michelin tires to the US. The couple divorced a few years later and Anne-Marie became a published children’s author under the name, Anne-Marie Chapouton.

Shortly after he received a French Baccalaureate at Lycée Français, he spent brief periods of time at M.I.T. and New York University, and eventually at Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he studied architecture and worked in city planning (1960-1965). He also continued drawing and painting.

Throughout the 1960s, Larrain was a pioneer in kinetic art, using air, smoke, light, inflatable structures, water and neon tubes as means of artistic expression. In 1963, Larrain traveled to Oaxaca to study in Monte Alban and Mitla, where he realized drawing was insufficient to capture everything needed for information — photography became the essential medium to ask the right questions and get the right answers. Here, Larrain learned to use the camera to create pictures that magnified emotions. From this point, he decided to become an architect of the image.

Larrain’s second marriage was to Marie Christine Bon in 1965 and they had a daughter, Olivia, in 1968. His third marriage was to Isabella Coco Cummings in 1989 and together they had a son, Lasco, in 1991. He is currently married to textile and couture designer, known by her first name, Louda, whom he married in 2006.

Work

Larrain’s first one-man painting show was held in New York at the Southampton East Gallery on 72nd Street in 1966. In addition to photography, Larrain began to add additional visual art forms. His paintings explored the space of shapes, colours, and materials; his kinetic art explored the space of light and volumes through neons and inflatable structure, which he showcased at the fifth Biennale de Paris “Espaces dynamiques en constant mouvement” and won the Les Levine prize with Francois Dallegret for their common work, Tubalair, at the sixth Biennale in 1969.

In 1968, The New York Post Daily Magazine featured an article about Larrain written by Nora Ephron. He also appeared at the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York established by cellist and performance artist, Charlotte Moorman, and Korean American artist, Nam June Paik. Larrain began photographing full-time in 1969, which included commercial work for clients, such as Club Med, GTE, Lavazza, Knoll International, Joel Name Eyewear, American Ballet Theatre, Renault, as well as magazines, such as Esquire Magazine, Vogue, Oui, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, New York Magazine and more.

In 1973, Larrain published the highly successful and controversial book, Idols, which presented portraits of New York’s most talented, outrageous, glamorous transvestites, and mostly gay personalities, who posed in his legendary SoHo studio. Idols is an authentic compendium of 1970s Warhol-era New York style and attitude, featuring Holly Woodlawn, members of the San Francisco-based psychedelic drag queen performance troupe, the Cockettes, Taylor Meade, and John Noble.

Throughout the 1980s and later, Larrain’s portraiture style was constantly sought after by luminaries, including Miles Davis, Sting, Billy Joel, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, Glenn Close, Norman Mailer, Mikhail Baryshnikov, publisher Maurice Girodias, Joe Cocker, wife of the late Shah of Iran, former Queen of Iran Farah Diba Pahlavi, Salvador Dali, and more. His skills were also used to create album covers for musicians. His subjects have ranged from dancers and musicians to artists and celebrities to friends and even a murderer, Michael Alig. Larrain insisted on mastering the entire photography process from taking shots on the camera all the way through the darkroom, so rather than meeting models in their own environment, subjects came to Larrain’s studio to be photographed. Larrain aimed to capture the emotional background in addition to light, extracting what he wanted to extract. In 1982, Larrain worked with Robert Mapplethorpe, Deborah Turbeville, and Roy Volkmann on the book, “Exquisite Creatures,” which was published in 1985 by William Morrow & Company, Inc., focusing on the ineffable beauty of woman through a series of nude portraits.

In 1983, Larrain planned to visit Spain for a couple of weeks to photograph flamenco for GEO Magazine. He ended up staying more than two months in the attic of La Carboneria, a flamenco venue in Seville, as a guest to the owner, Paco Lira, recognized as a godfather in the flamenco world. Captivated by the flamenco aesthetic, Larrain used his camera to capture the soul of flamenco in one of those rare artistic conjunctions where technical wisdom and experience become melded with the most difficult to express emotions. Larrain has also been playing flamenco guitar player since 1960, often playing at various events, including the Art Salon Parties he would regularly host at the SoHo live-work space shared with his current wife, Louda. Their shared studio was 7 metres high with three intermediate floors, no windows showing anything of the outside world, and art displayed everywhere. These events were opportunities for new and established artists to meet and share creative collaborations. From 1996-2005, Larrain taught “The Intimate Portrait” course for International Center for Photography (ICP) at his studio.

Larrain now lives on Kauai, Hawaii with Louda. Together, they are developing a photography project, Dark Angel. He is in the process of publishing a book of his works, Stories by a Memory Maker, and continues to create. Much of his work is available for viewing on Behance.

Main exhibitions

Bibliography

Books By Gilles Larrain

Books Featuring Gilles Larrain

Selected press

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