Our Paul iii: Victim

At his second Federal sentencing

yesterday, tacking an additional

term of years upon his leasehold

of penal hospitality, our Paul

inspired the district attorney

for Manhattan to offer him some

indictments under New York law,

(an unutterably blunt restraint

from the bluebloods of the Bar,

upon our apostles of sleaze),

to spare him the embarrassment 

of any freedom inflicted by the

President, whose delirious, lum-

bering reach extends no further

than to the planet and the stars,

but not into the States. But that

was as far as our chronicling of

Paul's transfiguration as victim

of prejudicial prosecution could

extend, we thought, when we saw

a credible image, for a change.

Like the bourgeois boy with a

cane in François Truffaut's un-

forgettable dream sequences in

Day for Night, Sergio Larrain's

portrait of a Chilean child des-

cending a staircase, from about

ten years before, appears again

and again to the conscience as

a missive from a state of trust.

The Aperture Foundation is of-

fering Valparaíso, the book he

designed for this photographic

project, in cloth at a discount.

What have we been spending, to

understand our glamorous liars?

Sergio Larrain
1931 - 2012
Valparaíso
1960s