Here is the immensity: Three hundred thousand kilometers of Venezuelan land that extenuates on the edge of the abyss, at the foot of the cliffs, in front of the cordillera walls, on the edge of the seas; to the siege of the iron, the industries' towers and the cities of glass and sad rocks. A third part of the country belongs to it, to 'El llano venezolano'.

There is not one, but many plains: the high and the low plain, the plain from the mounts and the estuary, the one from the sand and shrub, from the dust and river, the plain from the houses, from the villages and the cities. But it is always out, laid down as an open circle.

El llanero wears calm, he undertakes several trades, he offers his fruits, pulses the harp. He stays quiet, waiting for something, or for himself, or just waiting to share his word as if he was giving away the fruit of his trade, asking for nothing in change. 

Tender, so sullen in those distances and in those virile trades, belongs to women. Thus, the heart and the anxiety overflow like the stray rivers of the savannah.

Luis Alberto Crespo

Rodrigo Benavides. Caracas, Venezuela. 1960

Photography studies in Caracas 1979, London 1982, Paris 1984 and Barcelona 1988.

He creates in Caracas the photography school 'Nucleo Fotosensible'. 

His work is recognised by Photo Fit in London 1981, Luis Felipe Toro, Eladio Alemán Sucre, Salón Michelena and Armando Reverón in Venezuela between 1985 and 2001; Nature's Wisdon ExpoAichi in Japan 2005, Gourmand Cookbook Paris 2012.

Collections:

Casa Latinoamericana, Brussels.
Biblioteca Nacional, Paris.
Centro de Estudio y Archivo de la Comunicación, Parma.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
Museo Contemporáneo Iberoamericano, Huelva.
Fundación Museos Nacionales, Caracas.

In 2011 he presents the book Los Llanos de Venezuela. El horizonte es el destino 

See more at  "La llanura improsulta"