Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck

Corrupted file from page 14, (V1)

Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14, (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No. 1, 1974-1976 presents an interrupted image. The images capture scenes from an urban development, La Vega, built to modernize and connect favelas in Venezuela. Using money from the newly nationalized oil industry in the 1970s, La Vega and Los Manalos became examples of a utopian promise—that the money accruing from the oil industry would be distributed to better the lives of the people. Using images of these developments and a “faulty scanner” to manipulate these images, resulting in the darkened lines and visual breaks that strike through the photograph, Balteo Yazbeck points to the fracturing and unreality of this promise.