Larramendi earned an Associate of Science degree in 1975, a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 1980 and holds a Doctorate of Science since 1994. He began his professional life in 1975 in a technical and scientific photographic laboratory, which he headed from 1983 to 1998, at which time he devoted himself entirely to photography. 

He began working with photography in 1969, holding his first exhibition in 1985. He has devoted himself entirely to photography since 1997. 

Larramendi gives lectures, courses and workshops on photography in Cuba and abroad. 

He has also been organizer and jury member for international photography and advertising events and contests. Among the latter, clients such as Habanos, Cervezas Cristal y Bucanero, Ciego Montero, Ron Santiago de Cuba, Western Unión and others stand out.

He is the editorial director of Ediciones Polymita since it was founded in 2007. 

His photographs have appeared in Cuban and international publications and his work has been featured in more than 100 books, some of which are Baracoa, Ciudad Primada de Cuba; Trinidad, un don del cielo; Matanzas, la Atenas de Cuba; 30 Maravillas del patrimonio arquitectónico cubano; La Habana, imagen de una ciudad colonial; Old Cuba; Campesinos en el alma de Cuba; Cienfuegos, la perla de Cuba; La Habana, arqueología de un espacio habitado; Las parrandas de Remedios; 200 años de historia y tradición y numerous books on the Cuban fauna and flora. 

Larramendi has had more than a hundred solo exhibitions and sixty group shows in various Cuban cities and across some twenty countries. 

The Julio Larramendi Gallery opened at the Conde de Villanueva Hotel in Old Havana in 2003. 

He is a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, the Union of Journalists of Cuba, the Cuban Association of Social Communicators, the International Federation of Photographic Art and the Zoological Society of Cuba. He is also a Research Associate at the Cuban National Museum of Natural History, a member of the Cuban National Committee of ICOMOS, and Distinguished Member of the Gonzalo de Cárdenas Vernacular Architecture Department. 

He was founder and first president of the Department of Latin American Photography at the José Martí International Institute of Journalism, professor and visiting artist in residence at the University of Alabama’s Honors College from 2015 to 2018 and Vacca Professor at the University of Montevallo since 2019. 

Larramendi is the recipient of numerous awards, including Fotocaza 90 Internacional (1990), the Espacio Award for the Habaguanex S.A. advertising campaign and for the iconography of Compay Segundo (2003), the Tocororo Award in advertising (2004) and the Espacio Award for his book Solo detalles (2004). He has also been awarded the Felipe Poey Prize for books on Cuba’s biodiversity in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2017 and 2018 and the Academia Award for four other books in 2004, 2015, 2017 and 2019. In 2020, Los cines de La Habana won First Prize in the Book Category at the Panamerican Biennial of Architecture of Quito. 

In 2019, with the artist Karen Graffeo, received the Southeastern College Art Fellowship award (USA) for the proyect “My other body”. 

In 2016 he was presented with the Espacio Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 2019, the Excelencias Award for his work at Ediciones Polymita.