*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

The photographer’s 12-year long project visualizes aging bodies, intimacy, and hard-fought self-acceptance.

The story of Narcissus warns us against gazing too long at ourselves. The Greek mythical character, who eschewed real-time romantic attachments after falling in love with his own reflection, models existential detachment that undermines a full and happy life. If real and alive today, what would he say about our obsession with social media and all that it reports back to us?

Time As We Know It, Marna Clarke’s long form documentary project, doesn’t stray into navel or other self-sabotaging gazing. Instead, it marks the passage of time as it registers on our bodies. Self- and combined portraits of Clarke and her partner Igor convey the comfortable intimacy of a long term relationship that blossomed later in life. Gray hair and wrinkles and all the living that produced them are, in her compositions, treasured gifts, and provide balance to pervasive media messaging about youth and beauty.

Humble is pleased to highlight Clarke as one of our ten standouts from the 2021 Critical Mass Top 50 finalists. Be sure to check out a virtual exhibition of Time As We Know It at SF Camerawork before it closes on May 24th.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Marna Clarke

PostedMay 5, 2022

AuthorRoula Seikaly

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Art News

TagsMarna Clarke, photolucida top 50, photolucida critical mass, aging and photography, photolucida2021HAFtop10

Out on the Range, January © Michael Young. From his series *Hidden Glances*.

Michael Young disassembles gay calendars as a metaphor for his closeted years.

Michael Young’s “Hidden Glances” is a series of handmade cutouts from erotic gay calendars spanning the time he hit puberty until the day he came out, collaged and reimagined. Young overlays images to compress time and space – years he sees as a void of hiding in plain sight.

The resulting images (even those rendered in black and white) are bright and colorful, contrastingly balancing joy, fear, and a memorial to time lost. They swell and sweat eroticism and desire, hanging with regret for the time he could not publicly acknowledge his true self.

“When I wanted to look at guys,” Young writes, “I could only risk taking quick glimpses because I was afraid that my gaze would linger too long and expose my homosexuality.”

We're proud to include Young among 10 artists Humble is spotlighting as jurors for Photolucida's 2021 Critical Mass. Roula Seikaly and I selected work we find truly remarkable in vision and concept, and Young is a shining star among many talented artists. For a limited time, Klompching Gallery is offering a super affordable edition of Young's work HERE. Get one before Gagosian snaps him up!

I spoke with Young to learn more about his work, his evolution as an artist, and his use of “reverse collage” as a powerful metaphor.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Michael Young

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

Aging and Acceptance in Marna’s Clarke’s Time As We Know It

The photographer’s 12-year long project visualizes aging bodies, intimacy, and hard-fought self-acceptance.

A Photographer Finds His Voice Through Bold "Reverse-Collages" About Coming Out