PARIS.- The 12th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is dedicated to Venezuela and its hardships at the individual, social and ecological levels. It is chaired by Quentin Bajac, director of the Jeu de Paume. The Award was awarded to Fabiola Ferrero.
In her report, Fabiola Ferrero explores the disappearance of the Venezuelan middle class. A prosperous democracy in the 1960s-1970s, Venezuela is now struggling to extricate itself from a deep political and economic crisis that has widened the inequality gap and destroyed the middle class. Mixing archival images, videos and photographs, Fabiola Ferrero chronicles this vanished economic success and contrasts it with the Venezuela of today.
“My family, friends and later myself left Venezuela, leaving only traces of a long gone promise. I went back to dig into the past to photograph the remains of a lost glory built on oil. This project is a search for a country that existed before collapse. —Fabiola Ferrero
The 12th edition of the Carmignac Award will be simultaneously exhibited at the Réfectoire des Cordeliers, and on the quais of Solférino, in partnership with the City of Paris, from October 27th to November 22nd, 2022. A monograph, co-published by Fondation Carmignac and Reliefs Éditions will be released at the same time.
Fabiola Ferrero is a journalist and photographer born in Caracas in 1991 and currently based in Colombia. Her personal work is the result of how her childhood memories contrast with nowadays Venezuela, her home country. Using her background in writing and investigative journalism, which she studied in Caracas (UCAB), she develops long term visual projects about South America, and especially Venezuela’s crisis. Her educational background in photography includes the Joop Swart Masterclass 2019 and the Eddie Adams Workshop. She was a jury member for the World Press Photo 2022 contest South American region and Magnum Foundation Fellow for the Social Justice Program in 2018. Interested in bringing opportunities to other newcomer photographers in the region, Fabiola founded Semillero Migrante, a photography mentorship program around migration. Among her recognitions are the Inge Morath Award, 6Mois Photojournalism Award and the Getty Images Editorial Grant. She was also a finalist for the Alexia Grant, Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award. As well as developing independent investigations in South America, her work has been featured in TIME, The New York Times, National Geographic, MMagazine, Le Monde, and others. She is the 12th Carmignac Photojournalism Award laureate.
