This shot was taken in the poverty belt that surrounds Caracas. The family that usually lives in each house could reach easily 6 or 8 persons. They don't have running water, they steal electricity and the entire family earn enough to feed 2 or 3 persons...
And yes,we failed to eradicate the poverty here, even with the prices of the oil that we have nowadays. It's a shame....
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Speaking to the image as it stands on its own, disregarding the challenge:
While the shot, the scene, has potential, I am immediately aware of the extreme flatness/dullness of the lighting, which is coming from directly behind you. All sense of depth is lost, the surfaces aren't fully expressed. Shooting earlier or later in the day could have done wonders for this scene.
The same is true of the sky; it is utterly flat and featureless, except for the annoying kite (?) just left of center, which if this were an advanced editing challenge you'd surely have gotten rid of.
One can see where you have attempted to compensate for the flatness of the lighting by increasing the contrast, but that only takes you so far. As it is, it has resulted in the trees going nearly black, as they are by far the darkest objects in the image, so they have become like "blobs" in the picture, not contributing much at all.
So my advice would be to shoot at a better time of day, where the light is more expressive.
Compositionally, the image is awfully cut-and-dried, not dynamic at all, very static. Without having seen the location I don't know what's actually possible, but to me the image cries for foreground to give it both depth and context. If the foreground consists of elements that are in CONTRAST to the poverty of the favelas (is that right?) on the hillside, why then, so much the better IMO.
Speaking to the image as a challenge entry:
While I understand your perception of this scene as representative of "failure", I think that without the title it would be very hard to read that way, and even with the title it seems to be a bit of a stretch in a challenge called "failure". For example, some looking at this image would see it as an image showing men reaching upwards, striving, and think of it as an image of hope or striving, you know what I mean?
So it's an uneasy fit for the challenge, made all the more so by the fact that the image itself doesn't bring us INTO the poverty at all; instead we stand at a distance, observing but neither touching nor smelling nor hearing the very real human travail that IS extreme poverty.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'd love to see work from you that got much more up-close and personal on this subject :-)
Excellent portrayal of a failing society, but I don't think WE are the failure. I eradicated poverty from my family. I like your vantage point, but the two bottom trees are somewhat distracting.
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