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Special Edition featuring VAlparaiso, World Heritage Centre.
Citation preview
citysphere urban envi ronment photography
special edition: valparaiso: world heritage centre
issue nº 3
Welcome everyone to this special issue
of Citysphere, the photo-magazine dedi-
cated to the urban environment.
This time I have decided to feature the
Chilean city-harbor of Valparaiso, a
World Heritage Centre.
It is not easy to describe this city, precari-
ously built between the Pacific Ocean and
impossibly steep hills. In a way this city
defies any type description so it lends it-
self beautifully to be photographed.
Valparaiso is, no doubt, a special place
and possesses a personality lacking in
most cities in Chile. The architecture is a
wonderful mix of styles, with obvious
European, especially British, influences,
but then this would be expected from a
city so tightly entwined with the sea.
However, Valparaíso offers much more
than just interesting architecture; it fea-
tures complex narrow streets that seem to
follow no specific design, century old
lifts that defy gravity and transport people
to their homes away from the sea and up
the hills. Churches and old weather-
beaten houses desperately clinging to the
hillsides; there are cafes, art centres, res-
taurants and hundreds of places waiting to
be discovered.
I’ve got nothing else to say, whatever
else I write about this place is likely to
sound cliché, so I just hope the following
images can do some justice to this power-
ful urban wonder.
Marcelo Rabanal, November 2009.
Citysphere issue 3
All photographs, design and text by Marcelo Rabanal, 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcelor
http://mr.f-sur.com/wordpress/index.php
http://mrabanal.deviantart.com