Silvana Trevale is a Venezuelan photographer living in London, after finishing her degree at the University of Huddersfield in England, she moved to London where she started her career as a freelance photographer.
The crisis in her native Venezuela has motivated her to produce three of her latest photographic projects. With photography, she has found an outlet to celebrate her people as they face one of the most difficult political, social and economic crises in the world today.
Recently, Silvana received the Joan Wakelin Award funded by The Royal Photographic Society and The Guardian to continue her projects focusing on the Venezuelan Youth. In addition, earlier this year 2020, she held her first solo exhibition at ThePrintSpace in London, showing her latest piece, Venezuelan Youth.
Her work has been part of many exhibitions around the world, such as China, at the Pingyao International Photography Festival.
Finally, Silvana continues her career as a freelance photographer in the city of London while completing a Masters in Fashion Communication at Central Saint Martins University.
Since 2017 I have returned to my home country of Venezuela every year, exploring the lives of the youth and their daily struggles. Traveling outside Caracas, the capital, I met a number of subjects and families who I shared time with in order to gain a more intimate insight into their realities. I initiated this project due to the frustration and anger I feel towards the current crisis in Venezuela. As well as a faint nostalgia towards a Venezuela that my parents once lived, yet one that myself and the young living in Venezuela today didn’t. What intrigues me are the children’s constant shifts from a state of playful naivety, hardening into a more rigid, stoic attitude to their lived realities. Not only are they confronting the extreme food and medicine shortages that have caused the death of many around them, but also the lack of opportunities, leaving little room for hope, except for the possibility of leaving the country. With the images, I intended to create an abstract calming state I imagine the young feel between their innocence and a seemingly inevitable premature maturation.
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Instagram : @silvanatrevale