In 2018, Dutch photographer Pie Aerts spent nine months in Patagonia, often spotting puesteros from afar—lone figures atop horses silhouetted against the horizon. He described them as stoic yet vulnerable.

The 2020 lockdown in Amsterdam prompted Aerts to research the men’sிங்க isolation, where he found a short documentary. He reached out to its director, Australian filmmaker of Chilean descent Matías Bolla, who was also in quarantine. Their exchange led to a 2022 trip to Chile, the start of a feature‑length film in post‑production and the photo book Coirón (GOST Books). The book blends portraits of puesteros with shots of domestic settings and local landscapes, revealing both the little they own and the vastness that does not.

Aerts initially aimed to capture solitude but came to see that the men’s lives are shaped by precarity, dispossession, and a looming fear of retirement, with few pensions or social‑welfare benefits. A quoted puestero said, "What a shame to come to love the land that will never be mine."

Through non‑verbal exchanges—music, cooking, silence—Aerts forged relationships with the men, capturing hardship coexisting with resilience in stark, pathos‑laden images.