Left: Extract from Pedro Cunill Grau, Geohistoria de la Sensibilidad en Venezuela (Caracas: Editorial Fundación Empresas Polar, 2007), Chapter II, "La magnificencia tropical del paraíso terrenal". Maps designed by Álvaro Sotillo. / Right: Clipping from The New York Times, August 20, 1933, Section BR.
"The sensitivity of European discoverers to the magnificence of the tropics led them to locate the Earthly Paradise in Paria and along the Guayana coastline, as recorded from the very beginning through the testimonies of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci..."
Left: Venezuela. View from the northeast. Fortune Magazine, 1939. Map design by Richard Edes Harrison. / Right: 1952 Venezuela Road Map – Creole Petroleum Corp. Esso.
This map provides a comprehensive view of Venezuela's geographical and socio-economic landscape during a period of rapid transformation driven by the burgeoning oil industry.
Left: Cornell Capa, "Venezuela Essay," 1952, Life Magazine. / Right: Vintage commercial postcard of Lake Maracaibo, ca. 1950.
The omnipresent image of oil towers became the symbol of a landscape modified by extraction, almost heroically. Widely used to showcase industrial progress, these representations obscured ecological disasters from the public imagination.
My father, Paraguaná–Maracaibo Axis, 1962.
1 / 4