Venezuelan protests -2017
I've been taking pictures of protests in my country for a while. Heck, you could say i've learned most of what i've known and how to take pictures through these experiences. And it's been my intention to always show another face of these things: the desperation, lack of control and improvisation, not knowing what to do in these kind of situations. I prefer to avoid portraits and show a shot of a big scenario, where everything is happening already and looking at a camera is an ill advised thing to do. Resembling the paintings from our independence war.
Sleeping wasn't easy
I'm not saying it's PTSD or anything like that, nowadays I bet most of the people that where there can sleep without a problem (at least, not this one), I can. But, back then, you returned home and you felt somewhat incomplete, somewhat still anxious, even angry at times, it was the adrenaline of course. You had to lay in bed for a while reviving your day: how that tear gas bomb almost hit you, the bleeding guy who no one helped, having watched the GNB capturing people a few feet away from you, the choking, and on top of it all, the sounds. All of that felt beyond real, you couldn't sleep no matter how tired you were, you had to relive it, all that sensory overload was already in your head. Here are some of those memories made picture.
Then came the times we got close and personal. The couple of minutes during those endless hours something came straight up to your face and you couldn't avoid looking at it, be it yourself, realizing you can no longer run, be it someone else, when he cant move because of the shock:
When exhaustion is the only winner
This conflict ended practically through attrition. Protests were already sectorized, the repression was far more brutal than in the big ones because of the small amount of people. In my neighborhood, they would capture 3 or 4 kids every time we tried to protest; I once had to throw myself down the sewers because there was nowhere else to run or hide. People were just too scared to keep on it and we had little to no response from the political opposition parties. This photo was the last one I took from these conflicts which took around 150 lives and half of the year from 2017. A man at a crossroad between a fading resistance and an unwavering all-powerful narcotic government.