words and photographs by Silvana Trevale
As her home country grapples with crisis, photographer Silvana Trevale turns her lens on the nation’s children, many of whom are caught in a state of flux between playful naivety and rigid stoicism.
Since 2017, I have returned to my home country of Venezuela every year to explore the lives of the youth and their daily struggles. During my travels outside Caracas, I met many families who I shared time with in order to gain a more intimate insight to their realities. This project came about in part due to the frustration and anger I have been feeling towards the current crisis in Venezuela—as well as the faint nostalgia towards the country that my parents once lived in; one that myself and the children living in Venezuela today have never had the chance to experience.
What intrigues me most is the ways in which the children I spent time with are forced to shift from a state of playful naivety to a rigid stoicism in response to their lived realities. Not only are they faced with extreme food and medicine shortages that have caused the death of many around them, they are also met with a lack of opportunities, leaving little room for hope—except for the possibility of leaving the country.
With these images, I intended to capture an abstract state of calm that I imagine the young feel as they fluctuate between innocence and a seemingly inevitable premature maturation.
