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.