Venezuelan photographer, Fabiola Ferrero, won the 12th Carmignac Photojournalism Award for her series Venezuela, The Wells Run Dry, documenting the disappearance of the Venezuelan middle class following the collapse of the oil industry.
RFI met Fabiola Ferrero at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers in Paris where her photo exhibition Venezuela, The Wells Run Dry, run by the Fondation Carmignac and part of the PhotoSaintGermain festival, will remain open until 22 November.
RFI: Why this title Venezuela, The Wells Run Dry?
Fabiola Ferrero: It comes from the idea of something that stops being prosperous. There's a poem that says: "I am very thirsty and I'm right next to the fountain."
This idea of Venezuela having such huge natural resources, including oil [...] actually over 90 percent of our economy depends on oil [...] and not having the capacity to produce and to maintain the country with the prosperity that we were used to, made me think of a well that runs dry.
RFI: Can you explain what happened in Venezuela in 2002?
FF: There has been a lot of political turmoil in the past 20 years. In the year 2002, there was a national strike in the whole country which was paralysed for about two months. A big part of it was the oil industry, the Petróleos de Venezuela company (PDVSA).
After that, the president at the time, Hugo Chávez, decided to fire everybody that was involved in this strike.
About 18,000 people were fired from the company. And right before this happened, Venezuela was close to producing 3 million barrels of oil per day. After that, it never went back to that number.
In the following years, a political crisis began as well and in 2014, the oil prices dropped globally. That's really when the crisis started to deeply hit the country.
Right after Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, you could start to see food shortages and more protests in the street, a lot more violence and political prosecution.
You can see now the consequences of it that are really deep, especially outside the capital, and in the oil production centers of the country.
RFI: Is it easy to report in Venezuela right now?
FF: It's not easy. It also depends on what you want to report on. There are certain topics and areas that are a bit more complicated than others.
I think personally, from all the places I've been to in Venezuela, I would say the gold mining, which is not part of this project, but is something that I worked on in the past, is definitely the most dangerous one because you are not sure which armed actors are around and where.
Zulia State [northwestern Venezuela, bordering Lake Maracaibo] is also a bit complicated because there's a lot of surveillance around oil structures. So that's always something that you have to consider when you report.
RFI: Regarding the photos that are part of your exhibition, was it safe to shoot them?
FF: It depends. There are some images of the universities that were also a little bit complicated. One of them has been dismantled and destroyed, and it's been taken over by criminal gangs.
To get inside, I couldn't go alone. So we had to figure it out with some local people. I didn't see any armed gangs inside.
But you can see that there was some movement there because it was completely destroyed. There is no furniture, no computers. Obviously, there are not even any doors left. Even the walls have been destroyed to take out the metal that was inside, to be resold.
Besides that, if you are going to people's houses, you obviously feel a little bit safer.
A lot of the project also takes place inside the houses and there are a lot of portraits of the people that, to me, are the ones who really bring a form of resistance in the middle of the destruction.
RFI: Talking about inside the houses, it reminds me of that photo of a cracked wall inside the house of an elderly woman …
FF: That's Hilda Ravalillo’s house. She was a teacher for the state oil companies that had these houses specifically built for oil workers.
In their neighborhoods, they had their own school and churches, they had social clubs, pools. It was all specifically made for the people who worked in the oil industry. They were the upper middle class of Venezuela. And Hilda was part of it.
Nowadays her house, which still belongs to the PDVSA company, is cracking. The wall is basically falling apart and cracking right in the middle. She lives too close to Lake Maracaibo in the Zulia state. The ground is sinking and the house is falling apart.
RFI: There's another photo, of a parrot, maybe the most optimistic photo in the series.
FF: I agree. I think it was also important to me to not only show destruction and first of all to show the dignity of the people that I mentioned, their capacity for resistance to this destruction.
But also that's the contrast in Venezuela. You see all the infrastructure decay and then you look around and you see a palm tree or you are in Caracas and you see a guacamayo, which is a bird that likes to go inside your house, they're like very friendly to the people.
I like that picture because I'm a fan of these birds, but also, there's some nostalgic in it. You see it in the middle of the rain, it has the eyes closed. And then you see Caracas in the background, with a lot of green and the houses.
That's like the tropical sadness that I feel is part of our landscape.
RFI: When you came back to Venezuela for this photo project, how did you feel?
FF: It's such a strange feeling to put into words, and I don't think anybody who's not a migrant can really understand it.
I'm still living in Colombia...You don't really feel like that place is your home yet. Maybe in a few years I'll feel it.
So in my case, and I see it with a lot of friends, we learn to live with the pain of loss.
I think it's a positive thing that I left and was able to come back less attached emotionally and be able to look at the situation, not with a cold view, like "I don't care", not at all, I care a lot.
But being away for two years also allows you to breathe.
