Costras - PhMuseum

Costras is a visceral photobook that, through the author’s own experience, traces the social and emotional repercussions of the water crisis that has afflicted Chile’s Coquimbo Region, and the Limarí Province in particular.

Costras is a visceral photobook that, through the author’s own experience, traces the social and emotional repercussions of the water crisis that has afflicted Chile’s Coquimbo Region, and the Limarí Province in particular.

Over the course of a decade, Larraín’s camera records how the inhabitants of this territory—at once his neighbours, relatives, and close friends—gradually modify both their everyday routines and their perceptual relationship to the landscape.

Within these pages, images merge with an idealised imaginary only to collide with reality: the door swings open, the photographic frame speaks of a nostalgic yet now unattainable past.

Wounds overflow, the archive becomes the most precious treasure, and the ravages of time resurface time and again. For while the land is transformed and its people endure, the photographs (re)call us to remember.