In black and white: Venezuelan fisherman among oil ruins

landscape of Venezuela’s once robust oil industry lies all around fishermen and ir families who live in vills clustered on edge of Lake Maracaibo. ir struggles on a briny bay fouled by petroleum seeps and derelict oil rigs are etched onto ir faces and stained into ir clos.

Portraits of fishermen and industrial decay 

Seeing se people and this place on an earlier reporting trip, veteran Associated Press photographer Rodrigo knew he h to go back.This time, he set down his lightning-fast digital Can and spre tripod of his 19th century-style box camera to make black and white portraits of fishermen and industrial decay y call home.

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Argentine-born photographer h turned lens of his box camera before on subjects in Guatemala, Afghanistan, Mexico and streets of his home-base of Lima, Peru, documenting a spectrum of life’s emotions, from joy to trdy. He felt slower pace and mood of box photography would help capture poignancy and pain of Cabimas where fisherman live and work among idle, gray machinery.

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“In end, it was a story about oil industry and people,” Abd said. “It was an industry built 50 years ago, but ways is broken, and somehow black and white photos suggest that.”

Poetry and photography

At sunrise, men of Cabimas we into lake to harvest shrimp, fish and crabs. Women wait in she of shacks where y hand wash shellfish coated in oil. workday is done when fishermen unbolt ir skiff motors and stow m on banks for safekeeping.

Having heard ir stories and observed ir lives once before, Abd knew he would return, this time lugging along his box camera. “I thought it was a good idea to complete what I alrey h and to see same story in a different way, in a more poetic way,” he said.

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