Shine Heroes, a three-year project in which photographer Federico Estol worked with Bolivian shoe-shiners, frames resilience to social and economic discrimination as a foundation for solidarity.

Federico Estol’s Los Héroes del Brillo, or “Shine Heroes” encapsulates the artist’s three-year collaboration with Bolivian shoe shiners living in La Paz and El Alto. The multigenerational urban tribe, as Estol describes them, scratches out a living while facing rampant social and economic discrimination. Ski masks, worn to protect their identities from family, friends, and strangers, mark them simultaneously as Other and as members of a marginalized economic class that typifies hustle.

Working with a local NGO that supports shoe shiners through newspaper sales, Estol organized a participatory workshop for shiners to visualize their stories. Drawing on the visual language of comic books and graphic novels, shoe-shiners portrayed themselves as heroes, not outcasts, whose work is both honorable and valuable.

Shine Heroes was recognized as an outstanding series and presented as the Critical Mass 2021 Exhibition at Portland’s Blue Sky Gallery earlier this year. Humble is pleased to highlight Estol as one of our ten standouts from the 2021 Critical Mass Top 50 finalists. See the others as we write about them HERE.

(PS - registration for Critical Mass 2022 opened July 7th! Click here for details on how to submit)

Federico Estol in conversation with Roula Seikaly