Fabiola Ferrero

I Can’t Hear the Birds

Searching for the traces of Venezuela’s lost promise

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. But I keep coming back, looking for the traces of the promise of prosperity we were given, of the country from my childhood memories and the future we never got to see. I found it, in the middle of solitude, struggling to survive the general decay. Mixing archives from family albums, testimonies of remembrance, documentary images of nowadays Venezuela and multimedia elements, this project is a slow-paced dialogue between the past and present Venezuela. The illusion we built on oil seems to rapidly vanish, and it feels as if I’m trying to photograph a lake before it becomes a desert.

Fabiola Ferrero is a journalist and photographer born in Caracas. 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, she develops long term visual projects about South America, and specially Venezuela’s crisis. 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, the Carmignac Award, 6Mois Photojournalism Award, and the Getty Images Editorial Grant.