Gilles Larrain (born December 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, 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 Dalí, Miles Davis, Sting, Billy Joel, Roberto Rossellini, Norman Mailer, and more.
Born in Dalat, Indochina (now Vietnam) on December 5, 1938, Gilles Larrain began an atypical life moving to Chile, Argentina, Canada, France, and the United States, 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 City 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 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 wealthy clients including Miles Davis, Sting, Billy Joel,[1]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 and Salvador Dalí. 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 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
1966: "Sculptures", Group Exhibition of Artists, Max's Kansas City, New York
1966: "Paintings by Gilles Larrain", Southampton East Gallery, Long Island, New York
1967: "Light, Motion, Space", Sculptures, Group Exhibition of Artists, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
1967: "Light, Motion, Space", Sculptures, Milwaukee Art Center, USA
1967: "Luminism", Sculptures, The Artists' Club, New York
1967: "Kinetic Environment", Sculptures, Central Park, New York
1967: "5e Biennale de Sculpture", Sculptures, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, France
1967: "Espace Dynamique en Constant Mouvement", Sculptures, Group Exhibition of Artists, Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris, France
1968: "Light Rope, Modern Art", Sculptures, Group Exhibition of Artists, Neue Kunst U.S.A. Barock-Minima, Munich, Germany
1969: "Inflated Children's Painting", Shakespeare Theatre, New York
1969: "Induction Square", Lighted Sculpture, Group Exhibition of Artists, Suffolk Museum, Long Island, New York
1969: "Induction Square", Lighted Sculpture, Group Exhibition of Artists, Visual Art Gallery, New York
1969: "Ten Downtown", New York, USA
1969: "Neon Sculptures", One-man Exhibition, Benson Gallery, Long Island, New York
1969: "7th Annual Avant-Garde Festival", New York USA
1969: Tubulaire", Conceptual Sculpture, Group Exhibition of Artists, Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris, France
1970: "8th Annual Avant-Garde Festival", New York, USA
1971: "Sigma", Art el Technologie Bordeaux
1971: "Art et Technologies: Circus", Group Exhibition of Photography, Sigma, Bordeaux, France
1982: "Of 48 Black & White Prints", One-man Exhibition, Wye Plantation of the Aspen Institute, Queenstown, Maryland
1982: "Recent Photos", One-man Exhibition, Gallerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris, France
1983: "An Exhibition of Portraits", One-man Exhibition, French Institute, New York City
1984: "Coast to Coast: Recent Works of Photographers", Group Exhibition of Photography, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas
1984: "Des Enfants", One-man Group Exhibition, Galerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris, France
1984: "American Ballet Theater", One-man Group Exhibition, Dyansen 57 Gallery, New York
1984: "American Ballet Theater: 44th Year Retrospective", Group Exhibition of Photography, Dyansen 57 Gallery, New York
1985: "Art Mode Werbung", Group Exhibition of Photography, Gallerie Tabula, Tübingen, Germany
1985: "10th Anniversary", Group Exhibition of Photography, Gallerie Agathe Gaillard, Paris, France
1987-1992: "Faces and Spaces", One-man Exhibition, Services Culturels de l'ambassade de France, New York
1990-1991: "Mirros of Memory: Photos Icons", One-man Exhibition, The Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas
1991: "Photographes de la Galerie", One-man exhibition, Centre de la photographie, Genève, Switzerland
1992: "Personal Exhibition", One-man Exhibition, Centre de la photographie, Genève, Switzerland
1993: "Multiple Choices Here and Now", One-man Exhibition, The French Embassy, New York
1993: "A Retrospective: The Photographs of Gilles Larrain 1972-1993", The Union League Club, New York
1994: "84-94 Centre de la photographie Genève", Galleria Gottardo, Lugano Switzerland + Grand Passage, Genève, Switzerland
1995: "32 Photographic Diptychs", One-man Exhibition, Henry Buhl Foundation, New York
1996: "Nudeyork", Exhibition and book by 31 photographers, Mary Anthony Galleries, New York
1996: "Jazz Portraits", Group Exhibition, Center of Photography, Woodstock, New York
1997: "Photographie D'Une Collection", Group Exhibition, La Caisse des Depots et Consignations, Paris, France
2000: "Le nu photographie", Group Exhibition of Photography, Galerie d'Art du Conseil General des Bouches-du Rhone, Aix-en-Provence, France
2000: "Le nu photographie", Group Exhibition of Photography, Caixa de Sabadell, Espana
2000: "Le nu photographie", Group Exhibition of Photography, Ecole le Bon secours, Genève, Switzerland
2001: "Flamenco: Landscape of Its Soul", One-man Exhibition, King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, New York University, New York
2003: "Dance, Collection M+M Auer", Group Exhibition of Photography, Foundation Fluxum Laboratory, Carouge GE, Switzerland
2004: "Collection d'oeuvres photographiques de la Caisse des Depot et Consignations", Group Exhibition, Centre Culturgest, Lisbonne, Portugal
2004: "Collection M+M Auer Une Histoite de la Photographie", Group Exhibition, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genève, Switzerland
2006: "Flamenco: Paisaje del Alma", One-man Exhibition, Fundacion Tres Culturas, Seville, Spain
2006: "Flamenco: Paisaje del Alma", One-man Exhibition, Casa Escorza, Guadalajara, Mexico
2006-2007: "M+M Friends", Group Exhibition, Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques, Maison d'art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne, France + España
2007: "M+M COL.LECCIO Passion per la Fotografia", Group Exhibition, Nuseu d'Art Modern i Contemporani, Fundacio Es Baluard, Palma Mallorca, España
2007: "Regarde! Des Enfants Collection Collection M+M Auer", Group Exhibition, Photographie Pavillon Populaire, Montpellier, France
2007: "Flamenco: Paisaje del Alma", One-man Exhibition, Instituto Nacional Bellas Artes, Tetuan, Morocco
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