Coirón: Six years in Chile, following the lives of ageing gauchos

Pie Aerts’ book is a long-form documentary project, photographed over six years in the Chilean region of Magallanes, following Puesteros (Gauchos), who live and work alone, for months at a time across vast private ranches. Pie Alerts’ images were all shot on 120 silver-halide film, and are nothing short of stunning.

Puesteros’ lives, often silent, are shaped by distance, physical labour, and long periods of solitude, on land they do not own and with little security once their body begins to fail. This new body of photographic work follows their daily labour and stillness, offering a collective reflection on rural life in contemporary Chile, where meaning emerges through repetition, gesture, and the slow accumulation of time.

Embracing change but also resisting it

The wider region is undergoing rapid social, cultural, and economic change, and fewer young people feel the desire to pursue a life on the land, breaking a generational cycle of farm life. Caught in the middle, many puesteros move between embracing change and resisting it. Their interweaving stories form an intimate, complex portrait of a way of life on the brink of disappearing, and invites the viewer to pause within a world moving too quickly to keep up. You can find Iván Rojel Figueroa’s poem below, as part of the text of the book that expresses what it feels like to be a puestero.

Pie Aerts commented: “As long as I can remember, I’ve always feared being alone. Partly in a physical sense, but mostly in a deeper existential sense. Spending time in the presence of these puesteros, while seeing them sit through a life of silence, hardship and endurance, I started to open up to a different perspective on the silence I’ve always feared. As a result, and for the first time in two decades of self-discovery, I’m starting to embrace the idea that some of my fears have perhaps shaped who I am far more than I ever realised.”

Ungraspable

“As I looked at Pie Aerts’ photographs, I was struck by the breeze that wafts through them. They are realistic yet something in them remains ungraspable. I have spent time in Patagonia and, in a way, I am still there; Patagonia remains ever-changing” said Alberto Harambour, contributor with Pie Aerts of this book.

Biography of Pie Aerts

Pie Aerts (born 1985) is a Dutch photographer based in Haarlem. His work examines and questions the intricate and often melancholic relationship between people and place, in an attempt to explain why we seem increasingly disconnected from each other, ourselves, and the environment that sustains us.

By offering personal perspectives on memory, longing and human resilience, he explores how cultural identity is intertwined with the natural landscapes we inhabit. In doing so, he consistently chooses to prioritise hope over despair.

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