I have always loved hilly cities--among them San Francisco, Hong Kong, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Portland, Oregon. So it was no surprise that I was attracted to Valparaiso, a city rising steeply up from the Pacific on the Chilean coast, roughly 80 miles west of Santiago. Valparaiso, or "Valpo" as it is sometimes called, is home to more than 275,000 "Portenos". The Chilean navy is based in Valparaiso, and the city is Chile's major seaport as well as the meeting place of the country's legislature (though Santiago remains the capital).

Visually, Valparaiso is a stunning place. It is a crazy-quilt of colors, textures, shapes, and patterns. It is still home to 15 working "ascensores," rickety inclined planes that transport the city's "Portenos" up and down the hillsides, to and from work, taking them places that cars and other forms of transportation cannot reach. The city looks and feels like it has been bypassed by time, making it all the more beautiful and intriguing.

I want to return to "Valpo" someday, and spend far more time than the four hours I spent there in September, 2007. In what little time I had there, I tried to capture some of what attracted me to this unique place, but I hope to photograph it in a far more comprehensive way someday.

Note: Most of these photographs can be ordered in book form on www.blurb.com as of 11.1.07. Search under Valparaiso, or "Photolandscape."