In the Studio: Andrea Hernández

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Photographer Andrea Hernández has been travelling around her native Venezuela documenting people and nature for her ongoing project called Mango Season. Mango season in Venezuela is a time of abundance, when mango fruit is plentiful on the trees. During this time of economic crisis and food scarcity in the country, many people can now be seen roaming the streets looking for these fruits to feed themselves and their families. Andrea doesn’t want to just take photographs of the hungry, but to dignify the struggle, showing how people are helping to solve this situation and help create a bridge between the people in the photographs and the viewer.

Presenter: Francis Peña

Transcript

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0:00.0	Unexpected Elements Elements is all about finding the surprising science angles to everyday news.
0:06.0	Mind absolutely blood.
0:08.0	Amazing to me. That's Unexpected elements from the BBC World Service.
0:12.0	Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:15.0	Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service.
0:21.0	I'm Frances Peña and today I'm with the Venezuelan
0:24.8	documentary photographer Andrea Hernandez. If something makes me stop in my
0:29.5	tracks then I know I'm seeing something that's worth sharing.
0:34.0	So that's an image that I want to make.
0:37.0	Over the years, she captured the fallout from the economic crisis in Venezuela,
0:41.0	during which time millions have migrated from this oil-rich
0:45.3	and fertile country. Andrea wants to change the narrative that's often used to talk
0:50.6	about Venezuela and so she's been documenting how those who stay behind
0:55.2	are dealing with the food scarcity by using the natural richness found in nature.
1:00.0	Seeing children die of hunger or malnutrition specifically was something that really touched me and affected me.
1:10.0	And I decided that this was the point that I wanted to touch in mango season.
1:15.0	Showing how people solve the everyday life problems of figuring out what to eat for them and for their children and I think
1:25.5	this is a very important and dignified struggle and that's the way I want to
1:30.4	portray it. Her photographs have been shown around the world in the likes of the New York Times and Spain's
1:36.2	El Pais.
1:37.2	And she's twice won the Latin America Photography Contest, the Poi Latama Award, all taken with her trusty analog camera.
1:45.0	When everything slowed down during the pandemic,
	...

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