Between 2010 and 2012, I led a series of free, voluntary photography workshops in five Venezuelan prisons, engaging over three hundred incarcerated individuals. Through trust-building, negotiating power dynamics, and fostering mutual agency, Bule guided participants in exploring the history of photography, alongside exercises in formal experimentation and self-expression. This experience created a large photographic archive, which she protected after emigrating from Venezuela.
The project resists any attempt to define or expose a singular reality of Venezuelan prisons. Instead, it invites readers to navigate the tension between what images reveal and what remains hidden, between the potential for encounter and the persistence of distance, and between the photographers' self-representation and the systemic forces that render them invisible. Rather than reenacting narratives of violence or serving as a tool for sociopolitical critique, the book approaches incarceration obliquely, allowing for unpredictable forms of engagement.
Prison jargon's opacity underscores its central role in shaping belonging, trust, and survival in carceral contexts, while challenging photography's historical tendencies toward objectification and romanticization. de la LLECA alCOHUE:Photography in Venezuelan Penitentiaries offers a layered portrayal of the inalienable humanity of incarcerated individuals. In a global context marked by mass incarceration and penal populism, particularly under neoliberal restructurings in Latin America, the book gestures toward forms of resistance that move beyond polarized debates and the political dehumanization of those within carceral systems.
Photo: Armando Rojas
Photo: Wolfang Landazabal
Photo: Yennire Guacarán
Photo: Ricardo López
Photo: Luis Villamizar
Photo: Hencer Serrano
Photo: Marío Herrera
©Violette Bule
In 2023, the photobook de la LLECA al COHUE: Photography in Venezuelan Penitentiaries was published in Mexico City by Roga Ediciones, co-edited with Venezuelan photography historian Michel Otayek.
Book silkscreen printing process
During my residency at the Visual Arts Center, The University of Texas at Austin, I co-curated the exhibition Una Luz: Photography Under Confinement in Venezuela with Maysa Martins and Michel Otayek.
The exhibition presents photographic images alongside audio and written records from Bule’s ongoing collaboration with participants who have since been released from prison. This collective project, combined with Bule’s poetic texts and documentation, invites the viewer to consider life under incarceration through multiple lenses.
Photo: Alex Boeschenstein, courtesy VAC
Photo: Alex Boeschenstein, courtesy VAC
Photo: Alex Boeschenstein, courtesy VAC
Photo: Alex Boeschenstein, courtesy VAC
Documents reciprocal exchange, acts of witnessing, and the importance of trust within and beyond confinement