By Kristiana Gomez | Production Coordinator
Thank you so much to everyone who supported our very first GlobalGiving campaign! We are so honored and humbled to have made $7025, $2K more than our goal. Because of your contributions, we’ve been able to make great progress on our project goals.
Our photographers Marinela & Samuel traveled to the remote mountains of the Andes in Mérida state to capture the historic San Rafael de Mucuchíes Chapel, built by Juan Félix Sánchez from 1980 - 1984. This chapel shows off the unique construction technique developed by Sánchez, an artist who had no formal studies. He built it stacking local stones according to its shape and color, without any finishing. The artist and his partner, Epifania Gil, are buried under this chapel. The chapel has unfortunately suffered from damages and wear over the years, with tourists traveling to the site stealing rocks from the building as souvenirs. Our photographers will return to this site to cover areas of the interior/exterior that didn’t solve well and also to cover the El Tisure Complex in the area, and we are hoping to have a completed model of the chapel in early 2019.
Photographers, Luis C., Luis D., and Gustavo M. traveled to Yare, Venezuela to capture the Dancing Devils of Corpus Christi ritual, a religious festivity celebrated in San Francisco de Yare, Venezuela. The Venezuelan manifestations of the Dancing Devils of Corpus Christi were recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2012. We were able to complete rough solves of the House of Culture of Yare, Plaza Bolívar de Yare & San Francisco de Paula Church. We are working on completing solves of cultural items like masks, mask molds, percussion instruments, costumes, and more, but will need our photographers to travel back to Yare in the coming months in order to do reshoots. We are hoping to have these completed by next summer.
Unfortunately our efforts with El Calvario Park have come to a halt; it has become extremely dangerous to the point when we needed government approval and security for our photographers. The project has been rejected due to these complications. Luckily, we have another project to take its place: we will be capturing models at the Palace of the Academies in Caracas, an essential building that headquarters 4 other National Academies within the country. These academies all house significant documents, sculptures, paintings, and antique furniture. Our next steps here are planning out and executing a shoot within the site.
We have made great progress with our work in El Calvario (El Hatillo) shanty town (“barrio”). Our volunteers Nilda and Luis have met with community members who are excited about the project, and an expert in cultural heritage will have another meeting with the local coordinator this week to schedule the days of the activities. We are planning to have a couple of talks and two courses: basic photographic techniques and photogrammetry. The goals will be to get images of the community to build a visual archive for the local library and to shoot about 5 to 10 artifacts or places in photogrammetry. We will have a journalist there writing about the activities and about the objects selected by the community. We can’t wait to get started!
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