Sebastián Thomas: Pyramid of the Sun documents the remaining businesses and workers inside Pirámide del Sol, a shopping centre in Santiago de Chile that has struggled to compete with newer retail developments. Between 2022 and 2023, photographer Sebastián Thomas, born in 1982, walked through the building’s spiral corridors, photographing the shopkeepers and employees who continued to work there. His black-and-white medium-format photographs focus on the people who maintain their livelihoods inside an increasingly marginalised commercial space.
Pirámide del Sol was built in 1979 as part of the caracoles comerciales, a group of postmodern shopping centres designed around winding internal passages. Its architect drew on the form of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán, adapting the ancient structure’s geometric reference for a contemporary retail building in the centre of Santiago. The project reflected an ambitious belief in architecture as a way to reshape commercial and urban life.
For several decades, the building functioned as a distinctive landmark. Its design contrasted with more standardised shopping centres that later transformed the city’s retail landscape. As newer malls and commercial models gained influence, Pirámide del Sol lost much of its prominence. The building still operates, but its declining activity reveals the effects of changing consumer habits and urban development on older independent businesses.
Thomas photographs the interior as both a workplace and a record of recent architectural history. Storefronts, stairways, corridors, and individual rooms frame the people who remain inside the complex. The images avoid presenting the centre only as an abandoned or obsolete structure. Instead, they show the daily routines of those who keep their shops open and preserve a connection to the building’s original purpose. Pyramid of the Sun examines the relationship between architecture and memory while documenting a commercial environment at a point of significant change.
Sebastián Thomas: Pyramid of the Sun
Category: Photographer Monographs & Art Books
Author: Sebastián Thomas
Publisher: RM
Publication Date:
November 2026
Print Length: 128 pages
Language: English
Price: paid
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