Haunting photo from Chris Anderson’s new photo-documentary book about Venezuela, Capitolio. Here’s an excerpt from the review by The New York Times:
Murders in this hardened city have grown so widespread that looking at the homicide statistics alone can seem banal.
In one 60-hour span in July, for instance, the Bello Monte morgue overflowed with the corpses of 49 murder victims. Homicides nationwide surged almost 31 percent in the first quarter to 4,659, according to the Interior Ministry. No wonder Caraqueños grimly joke about studies of violence that rank their city as deadlier than Baghdad.
“Capitolio,” the new book on Venezuela by Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson, offers a stunning view into Caracas’s descent from its perch as one of Latin America’s most economically advanced, if unequal, cities into a place gripped by low-intensity chaos and fear.
He combines images of decaying modernist apartment blocks with the slums eating away at jungle that never seems to give up growing through the cracks of concrete. From the Ávila mountain overlooking the city, he captures the ugly, anarchic sprawl of what could be mistaken for São Paulo on a bad day.
I want this book.
