Horacio Larraín Barros

Horacio Larraín Barros (* 1929 in Santiago de Chile ) is a Chilean cultural anthropologist and photographer .

life and work

Horacio Larraín Barros lives in Iquique in the Atacama Desert , a coastal desert that is considered the driest desert on earth. The Humboldt Current prevents the development of rain clouds in the coastal area of ​​the Atacama Desert. Despite very little rainfall, heavy fog is regularly formed on the mountain slopes near the coast . The experimental physicist Carlos Alberto Espinosa invented the first fog catchers made of nylon and later made of polyethylene for the region. The coastal fog Camanchaca (translated: darkness) has been captured there with nets, the atrapaniebla , for drinking water since the 1980s .

From 1974 to 1981 Larraín Barros taught at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile . Horacio Larraín Barros has been studying fog in the Alto Patache oasis since 1997 . He has published five books and more than 450 articles on eco- anthropology and the history of indigenous peoples of the Atacama Desert.

“The cultural anthropologist Larrain, who has lived in the desert for decades, is not the only one who advocates the further development of ancient methods of water extraction, such as the erection of a simple fabric network to catch the fog. But his tremendous dedication to this project has become a source of inspiration for many Latin Americans and has sparked a debate about sustainable management of the region that has never existed before. At dOCUMENTA (13) he is showing pictures of the fog catchers in the Atacama Desert, which he has been photographing for over thirty years. "

- The accompanying book dOCUMENTA (13)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} dOCUMENTA (13). The accompanying book / The Guidebook. Catalog 3/3., Page 82, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7757-2954-3
2. ↑ dOCUMENTA (13) Horacio Larraín Barros , accessed on July 2, 2016 (English).