Finalist: I Can't Hear the Birds
This Premier category recognizes a photographer’s long-term story, project, or essay that focuses on the human condition and portrays a sense of justice or insight into difficult problems. This may include a facet of human relations, a mutual concern for world conflict, social injustice, or any number of other topics. The project may include a few portraits; however, the portraits should not comprise a majority of images within the project.
I Can’t Hear the Birds
Over 7 million Venezuelans have left my country. My family. My friends. Myself. One by one, we all left. I saw my home become empty, and my memories blur, as if looking at my childhood through a foggy window. Silence slowly took over the rooms that once belonged to my loved ones, and I traveled across the country looking for the Venezuela of those childhood memories. I found it, in the middle of solitude, struggling to survive the general decay. I Can’t Hear the Birds is a documentary project that chronicles the grief of our own normality as a consequence of the deepest economic crisis in our history. Mixing images of nowadays Venezuela’s rusty landscapes, the political violence from previous years, the emptiness of the houses from those who left, portraits of the resilient citizens who stay, and life happening in the middle of the decay, it aims to show the economic and social turmoil from the point of view of those who see everything changing from the inside. Whether you are a migrant or someone who decides to stay, the home we used to know is no longer there. I Can’t Hear the Birds is a dialogue between the reality around us and the constant memory of what Venezuela used to be. Just a decade ago, the country was still in a window of opportunity, with the majority of its population in working age and the oil barrel costing over 100$. Three years later, oil prices dropped, political violence took over and waves of young migrants, mostly between 15 and 34, started to cross to other countries. Although the first years of the crisis were covered with a focus on hunger and malnutrition, a more silent destruction later became present: the emptiness left by the devastation. Migration caused Venezuela to lose its “demographic bonus”, a favorable period in which the majority of a country's population is in working age. It also caused the student population to decrease over half in some universities. Construction dropped 98% since 2012, and the damage in the infrastructure would require over a decade of investment to be recovered, according to the Cámara Venezolana de Construcción, a local association of private construction companies. The places and people photographed still hold the traces of the country that existed before the collapse, sometimes hiding in a tumultuous present. I Can’t Hear the Birds shows the silent, daily life struggles, but also that, amidst the chaos, life always finds a way.
I Can’t Hear the Birds
Over 7 million Venezuelans have left my country. My family. My friends. Myself. One by one, we all left. I saw my home become empty, and my memories blur, as if looking at my childhood through a foggy window. Silence slowly took over the rooms that once belonged to my loved ones, and I traveled across the country looking for the Venezuela of those childhood memories. I found it, in the middle of solitude, struggling to survive the general decay. I Can’t Hear the Birds is a documentary project that chronicles the grief of our own normality as a consequence of the deepest economic crisis in our history. Mixing images of nowadays Venezuela’s rusty landscapes, the political violence from previous years, the emptiness of the houses from those who left, portraits of the resilient citizens who stay, and life happening in the middle of the decay, it aims to show the economic and social turmoil from the point of view of those who see everything changing from the inside. Whether you are a migrant or someone who decides to stay, the home we used to know is no longer there. I Can’t Hear the Birds is a dialogue between the reality around us and the constant memory of what Venezuela used to be. Just a decade ago, the country was still in a window of opportunity, with the majority of its population in working age and the oil barrel costing over 100$. Three years later, oil prices dropped, political violence took over and waves of young migrants, mostly between 15 and 34, started to cross to other countries. Although the first years of the crisis were covered with a focus on hunger and malnutrition, a more silent destruction later became present: the emptiness left by the devastation. Migration caused Venezuela to lose its “demographic bonus”, a favorable period in which the majority of a country's population is in working age. It also caused the student population to decrease over half in some universities. Construction dropped 98% since 2012, and the damage in the infrastructure would require over a decade of investment to be recovered, according to the Cámara Venezolana de Construcción, a local association of private construction companies. The places and people photographed still hold the traces of the country that existed before the collapse, sometimes hiding in a tumultuous present. I Can’t Hear the Birds shows the silent, daily life struggles, but also that, amidst the chaos, life always finds a way.