*Los Héroes del Brill*o © Federico Estol

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

PostedJuly 4, 2022

AuthorRoula Seikaly

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Art News

Tagsphotolucida top 50, photolucida critical mass, Federico Estol, staged photography, documentary photography, collaborative photography, photographer interviews, photolucida2021HAFtop10

Alae (In the Mirror), Beirut, Lebanon, 2020 © Rania Matar

Mark Alice Durant speaks with renowned photographer Rania Matar about her new photography book published by Radius Books.

Rania Matar is a Lebanese-born photographer whose portraits, primarily of girls and women, in the Middle East and the U.S., have gained critical and popular attention internationally. Her fourth book, She, is being published by Radius Books this fall, for which I was honored to contribute an essay. I first saw Matar’s photographs in a solo exhibition in 2016, titled Invisible Children, that presented portraits of refugee children on the streets of Beirut. I was struck by the simplicity and clarity of her imagery, yet also moved by the complex political subtext.

The history of photography is shaped by portraiture. It is the most rudimentary of photographic relationships––one person points a camera at another. From that simple arrangement has grown an enormous archive of formal and informal images, providing a sense of who we are, individually and collectively. What distinguishes a complex portrait from a photo made for a passport? What elevates mere likeness into an image that resonates?

Like many great portraitists before her, from August Sander to Seydou Keita, Matar, first and foremost, respects and honors her subjects. And in doing so, Matar has expanded the spectrum of human representation. She describes her portrait sessions as collaborations; that collaborative spirit, combined with her intuitive sense of light and sensitivity to the architectural and cultural space that surrounds us, has produced an extraordinary body of work. Matar’s solo exhibition, which shares its title with the book opens October 23rd at Robert Klein Gallery.

Mark Alice Durant in conversation with Rania Matar

PostedOctober 18, 2021

AuthorMark Alice Durant

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Exhibitions, Photobooks

TagsRania Matar, Mark Alice Durant, Lebanese photographers, women photograph, portraits of women, photography and the middle east, photography and adolescence, Radius Books, 2021 photobooks, new photography, documentary photography, contemporary photographic portraiture

Fresh Meadows Cranberry Farm © Gene Dominique

Gene Dominique’s Still Here - African American Farmers in the 21st Century shows Black farmers of all ages and experience levels contributing to a backbone of American industry, despite numerous hurdles.

In March 2021, it was announced that roughly half of the $10.4 billion dollar portion of the American Rescue Plan earmarked for agriculture relief will go to Black farmers. Aid in the form of debt relief, grants, training, education and other assistance will help historically disadvantaged farmers acquire land and build or supplement existing farms. The news is welcome, and tainted by a lawsuit filed by disgruntled white farmers who insist that the Biden administration’s strides toward equity are biased.

While the case winds its way through this country’s labyrinthine legal system, the farmers portrayed in Gene Dominique’s long form documentary project Still Here - African American Farmers in the 21st Century will continue working. Inspired by his family’s south Louisiana agricultural legacy, Dominique captures the love and labor of working the land in images that easily rival the storied work of Farm Security Administration photographers.

I’ve known and admired Gene’s work for a few years now. It was a pleasure to learn about the series’ origin, how it started and who participates, and how he plans to pursue it as Covid-related restrictions are slowly lifted.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Gene Dominique

PostedAugust 5, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

TagsBlack farmers, African American farmers, american agriculture, agricultural photos, Gene Domininque, Roula Seikaly, photographer interviews, documentary photography, photojournalism

Shortly after Anna Grevenitis’ daughter Luigia was born, she was diagnosed with trisomy 21 - Down Syndrome. For many parents, such news challenges the hopes they harbor that their child will live a “normal” life. By her mother’s account, the now-15-year-old Luigia is a thriving teenager. As her parent and primary companion, Grevenitis knows this better than anyone in her daughter’s life.

Through their ongoing series Regard, Grevenitis invites us to observe choreographed, routinized domestic acts - bathing, grooming, preparing for bedtime - as they unfold between mother and daughter, a loving caregiver and her charge. Our welcome is conditional, though, and requires us to consider who we are looking at, and why. I spoke with Anna and Luigia about this project, and its potency as a visual exploration of spectatorship, collaboration, vulnerability.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Anna and Luigia Grevenitis

PostedJanuary 30, 2020

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

Tagsphotography and down syndrome, self portraiture, self portrait photographers, documentary photography, concerned photography, photography and empathy, contemporary black and white photography

© Lauren Silberman. From the series The Opposite of Salt — © Lauren Silberman. From the series *The Opposite of Salt*

Lauren Silberman has been photographing communities and subcultures in New York City, its outer boroughs, and across the United States for nearly two decades. While technically “documentary,” her work is full of narrative and metaphor, and often is more enigmatic than the straightforward reportage one might expect. I recently had the opportunity to dig into her work when selecting her as a finalist for the juried exhibition American Splendour at New York City’s Iloni Art Gallery this past summer.

Her latest series, The Opposite of Salt is Water, which opens this Friday at Calico Brooklyn in Brooklyn, NY pushes this further, with a new sense of magical ambiguity. Photographing in Amboy, an unincorporated community in San Bernardino County, in California's Mojave Desert, Silberman uses images from the region to represent symbols of ideology and mythology associated with the evolution of the American dream.

In advance of her new exhibition, I emailed Silberman to learn more about her work.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Lauren Silberman

PostedSeptember 27, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Exhibitions, Portfolio

TagsLauren Silberman, Black Label Bicycle Club, documentary photography, New York City Photographers, afterparty photography, interviews with photographers

Heroic Photographs of Bolivian Shoe Shiners in La Paz and El Alto

She: Rania Matar's Portraits of American and Middle Eastern Young Women Entering Adulthood

Still Here - Gene Dominique Photographs African American Farmers in the 21st Century

A Mother and Daughter Use Photography to Challenge the Stigmas of Down Syndrome

Lauren Silberman Photographs Afterparties, Punk Rock Bike Clubs and the Mystery of the American Dream