Signed; Christopher Anderson - Capitolio - 2009

Over all a very nice copy of the out of print book (a black mar on the cover). Signed with a dedication (see picture).


Text: The Venezuelan National Anthem and Jose Marti. Design: Christopher Anderson, Bethany Powell.

Capitolio is a cinematic journey through the shadows of Caracas, Venezuela, during the revolution. In the tradition of William Klein’s New York and Magnum photographer Robert Frank’s The Americans, Christopher Anderson creates an emotional portrait of a time and place that is on the verge of exploding. Rather than a didactic or journalistic approach, Anderson offers a poetic vision of a place where the violent and the sensual coexist.

The word Capitolio alludes to the domed building that houses a government. In this book, Caracas itself becomes a metaphorical Capitol. Instead of walls, we have a rotting modernist architecture that has been built with petrodollars. It seems to suggest an age of opulence, but through the cracks a jungle opens up, revealing the decomposition going on inside. The streets act as surrogate actors for the halls of this building where human drama and political intrigue are brought to the stage.

bChristopher Anderson was orn in British Columbia in 1970, he spent much of his early years in Texas, where his father was a preacher, before moving to New York City and then Paris. His life in photography began in the photo lab of the Dallas Morning News. In 1993 he was hired as a staff photographer for a small Colorado newspaper. He left the newspaper in 1995 and began doing freelance assignments. Initially working in color, Anderson began photographing a wide range of subjects for magazines. In 1996, he became a contract photographer for U.S. News & World Report. There he began documenting social issues such as the effects of Russia’s economic crisis. Also, the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia. After that in 1999, Anderson covered Haitian immigrants trying to sail to the United States. Above all, this project changed his work to focus on what he often thought of as experiential journalism.